Our History

“What’s going on in your country?” she asked in a lilting New Zealand accent. “I am in Berlin, and there are so many Bulgarian women on my streets. Why?” That was the phone call in 2010 from a New Zealander who for decades had been walking the streets of foreign cities helping prostituted women. We heard, “These women on our streets [in Berlin] are your mothers, sisters, and daughters.” We saw prostituted women in a different way, for we had been blind, unable and not wanting to see, even as we passed by women being prostituted on our own streets, day after day. We learned that Bulgaria was and continues to be known as a major exporter of girls and women for the European sex industry. Why? We responded, “Help us understand!” We asked future colleagues with whom we are now networked and they coached us, giving freely of their experience, insights and training.

During 2011-12, a handful of Christian expatriots and Bulgarian nationals came together to become known as the Daughters of Bulgaria Coalition (DofBC). They grew in their commitment to reaching out to the prostituted women on the streets of Sofia offering coffee and snacks, a smile, a listening ear, and help for needs as possible. At the same time, they visited like-minded organizations throughout Europe in order to understand the scope of the tragedy affecting the Bulgarian daughters. "What did we now know? What could we begin to do? How could we respond in hope?”

In 2012, the DofBC assisted the newly formed European Freedom Network (EFN), the International Christian Alliance on Prostitution (ICAP), and Business as Mission (BAM) in hosting a combined international consultation addressing the issues of human trafficking and sexual exploitation throughout Europe. After this first “Bridge Conference” and responding to the challenge and advice from the experienced leaders of these networks, the Outreach Team continued more consistently with weekly outreaches, while the DofBC continued researching and trying to grasp who was doing what to address these issues in Bulgaria specifically. The question from the Outreach Team was, “What do we do, what do we say, when any of these prostituted women with whom we are developing relationships, asks for help to leave her place of exploitation and move towards a new way of life?” The reality was there were very few, if any, options to which they could refer the women being prostituted, for help.

While researching, one of the founders came across Servants Anonymous Foundation’s Program Model of Recovery, based in Vancouver, CA. The DofBC agreed that this was the holistic model of action which they should adopt. This model, especially, focused on the answers to the questions that the Outreach Team was asking.

In 2014, the Daughters of Bulgaria Foundation (DofBF) was registered as a non-profit organization in Bulgaria, and in 2015, the DofBF entered into a partnership relationship with the SA Foundation to establish a franchise project of their Program Model and the Rose Garden Program (RGP) was created as a subsidiary organ of the DofBF.

Throughout 2016, some of the members of the DofBC engaged in extensive training and preparation to implement the Rose Garden Program, while simultaneously continuing with the ongoing activities of Foundation with weekly Outreach Ministry and nurturing the beginnings of offering employment readiness skills to survivors of prostitution. In the winter of 2017, the RGP opened the Learning Center (full-time day program for social reintegration) and offered residential assistance to survivors of sexual exploitation and trafficking (with or without children).