Single Step Foundation

I am a social entrepreneur: I founded Single Step Foundation to support, motivate and empower young LGBTI people in Bulgaria, one of the least LGBTI-friendly countries in the EU. The Foundation registered a company, which purchased and renovated a big venue in downtown Sofia, which we recently opened. The Steps (https://thesteps.bg/en/) is the social enterprise of the Foundation, whose goal is to achieve (i) the sustainability of the Foundation (100% of the profits will be reinvested in the Foundation and our cause) and (ii) LGBTI acceptance in the country, through active dialog with numerous stakeholders. The Steps features a bistro/café and a multifunctional event space.

If selected as the winner, I will create a social entrepreneurship academy targeting non-profits not only in Bulgaria but globally as well. Through a structured curriculum and a mixture of virtual, hybrid and physical events, my goal will be to teach other non-profits to become more self-sustainable with a laser focus on social impact. My dream is for The Steps to become a global hub for social entrepreneurship. Further, I would love to prove that social entrepreneurship can be extremely effective for achieving meaningful social impact even for “difficult” causes such as LGBTI.

For many years I was an investment banker in New York, but the story of a young man I did not know changed my life and made me move back to my native Bulgaria. I was back home on vacation and at a party, this young guy asked me if we could talk. I am an openly gay man, and I guess the only gay man, this young guy knew. He had told his mom he was gay, and she had taken him to a psychiatrist to be “cured” of his “disease”. He ran away from home and tried to commit suicide. I enquired, where do young LGBTI people find help, when turning to their closest ones results in a suicide attempt. I was stunned that absolutely no resources existed in Bulgaria for kids like him.  

One thing led to another and I eventually returned to Bulgaria to establish Single Step to help him and the tens of thousands of teenagers like him. Single Step now provides comprehensive support resources both to LGBTI youth and their parents through an online chat, telephone hotline, peer support groups and a network of psychologists around Bulgaria.

We are solving two main problems through Single Step (i) and The Steps (ii):

(i) LGBTI people in Bulgaria (estimated at appr. 400,000 people in a country of 7 mm people) live in one of the least LGBTI-friendly places in Europe.  According to Eurobarometer, only 7% of Bulgarians would feel comfortable if their child was in a same-sex relationship. Bulgaria has the lowest percentage of same-sex marriage approval in the EU – 16%. As a result, young LGBT people experience an aggressively hostile online and offline social environment. We solve that problem through our comprehensive support services, career center for young LGBTI people, numerous awareness raising campaigns and partnerships with various stakeholders.

(ii) Generally, the NGO sector in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe is weak and unsustainable. We believe that, if successful, our social enterprise can be a case study and provide a road map for other NGOs across various sectors, domestically and internationally, showcasing our “start-up” approach and focus on sustainability. We are solving this problem by leading by example and being pioneers in the field of social entrepreneurship (e.g. we structured the very first social impact loan in the country with the bank UniCredit).

The vast majority of existing solutions in the strive for LGBTI acceptance and equality worldwide, involve activism and advocacy work, which have been instrumental in achieving major advances for the LGBTI cause. However, we have adopted a different, bottom-up approach in order to achieve critical mass and LGBTI acceptance in Bulgaria.

Single Step Foundation registered a company, which purchased, renovated and furnished a large property in downtown Sofia, which houses The Steps, our social enterprise / community center. It comprises of a café, an inclusive multifunctional event space – community, corporate and private events/conferences, theatre, cinema, club, a digital lab/production studio. The Steps also provides licensed psychological and medical counselling, legal advice, peer networking, a “safe space” to youth at risk and employment opportunities to members of our community.

The Steps overall goals are to: (i) empower young LGBTI people, (ii) achieve sustainable social change through active participation of numerous stakeholders, (iii) achieve sustainability of the Foundation and (iv) utilize our experience as a blueprint for other NGO in the country and beyond.

“A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”; the name of the Foundation is based on this Chinese proverb. Our path to achieving global impact is also based on single steps. I founded the Foundation with the simple goal to help young LGBTI people in Bulgaria and achieve acceptance in the country. I am proud to say that within 4 short years, Single Step has provided life-saving support to the community. 

Our journey continued with the establishment of our social enterprise, The Steps. It is now fully operational and achieved quite a recognition within society. 

Our next step will be to share that experience as social entrepreneurs with other NGO’s in the country, and globally. This is what motivated me to apply for the Solve prize. If selected, your prize will fund a structured program to teach activists how to be more sustainable, and to achieve social impact through a bottom-up approach.