Hello!

My name is Zdravka, from Sofia. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the pandemic I have been abroad, and now with two small children in maternity care, on welfare.

Life has turned me around so much that at this stage I can't go back to my home country due to lack of sufficient financial opportunity and most of all because my mother's flat I grew up in was taken away from her last year as she was cheated when I was a child. And my brother, who is autistic, and my sister, who is even younger, have been institutionalized until now.So that was eighteen years of lawsuits that my mother lost, both before the District Court and the High Court of Cassation.

I was in an advanced pregnancy, last year, when they drove the mother out, with a bailiff on the street, and I, given the circumstances, could not be by her side. I was only able to find her a room to rent for a few days, albeit in another city, given our low financial means. I was briefly relaxed, but she held out for a few months until she was asked to leave... And so back to square one.

So it started from shelter to shelter and back to the streets. Of course I had invited her to stay with me, but here in the UK she could stay for no longer than six months.

The only inheritance I have from my father is a nearly burnt down house in the Chirpan district. It took me a long time to convince her that this was all we had and it would be wisest to invest time and energy in this meagre property.

But there are virtually no living conditions there. There is no electricity, no water supply, the first floor floods when it rains, the second floor is burned to the ground (with suspected arson), and the roof has collapsed. It is housed in the only healthy room, the so-called summer kitchen. I send her savings, but they are woefully inadequate.

Her health is already very much deteriorating. She is a sick pensioner with over 80% disability, unable to work. I have managed to arrange to come home to Bulgaria for ten days to help her with whatever I can physically. But this is still extremely insufficient...

We have no relatives or wealthy friends to help. I feel trapped because I can neither work enough, given motherhood, nor have somewhere to go home to be close to my mother and help her in everyday life.

We need funds to set up this little house to live in so I can return and reunite my family for good.