The story of Milad

The Refugee and Migrant Service of the Bulgarian Red Cross is working in support of start-up refugee businesses within a project funded by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Bulgaria (UNHCR). In 2021, Milad successfully ranked first in the procedure for selection of business proposals and received administrative and material support.

Milad is a 30-year-old man who fled the war in Syria. He arrived in Bulgaria in 2014, and the vast and unknown Bulgaria opened before him. After graduating from high school, he failed to attend university due to the war. He leaves behind his life, family and friends, the prospects for education and continuing a successful family business in the textile industry. He turned to Bulgaria in the hope of a dignified life and security. Despite the initial difficulties known to all refugees - a new language, unfamiliar places, new customs and habits - Milad is determined to do his best to integrate into society.

He learned Bulgarian, made friends, and in 2019 started working at the Bulgarian Red Cross as a translator. He later lectured on driver's courses for people in the Arab community. Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, he is determined to start his own business to provide a better life for his parents and community members to whom he wants to offer jobs.

Thus, in 2021, within the program of the Bulgarian Red Cross, he successfully ranked first and was supported by the Red Cross Refugee Service. With a little help and a lot of personal effort, in September 2021, he opened his own fast food restaurant. It serves traditional Arabic food, preserving the recipes and tastes that are so familiar and dear to him since childhood. Milad hopes that thanks to his good work he will help not only his relatives and members of his community, but also the whole society. In this way, he will remind everyone that humanity is universal, that there is no ethnicity or religion, but that it is rooted in sharing.

Behind many of the asylum seekers in Bulgaria are inspiring stories like Milad's; persons for whom leaving the place of birth is not a free choice, but a decision imposed by the circumstances. People who, despite the difficulties and pain of a bygone era, embrace their new homeland - Bulgaria.