In October 2013, public attention in Bulgaria and Europe was drawn to Maria, the “blond angel." The blond little girl – a biological daughter of a Roma couple from Nikolaevo – was found in a Greek Roma settlement. There were concerns that when the media spotlights go out, Maria would return to a life of exclusion without any documents or rights. This is why the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) decided to meet her parents in early 2014 and take a look at her birthplace – the ghetto in the town of Nikolaevo, Stara Zagora.

In one of its reports not long ago, CNN called the Roma settlement in Nikolaevo “the village built with mud and straw.” More than 1,000 people live here. Only 50 of the 200 houses are suitable for normal life, though there are a couple of houses valued at roughly 100,000 euros as well. All the rest is mud and straw. The ghetto, called "Renaissance," is located at the lowest geographic point in the region. The people at the bottom often say: "We don’t live at ground zero, but even below."

The Mayor of Nikolaevo, Kosyo Kosev, explains: "Life at the very bottom perpetuates social isolation. The unemployment among the Roma in the municipality is 99 percent. The majority of the adult Roma population of the settlement is illiterate as well as the children, even though they are said to attend school."

Men and women from the Roma ghetto find salvation in seasonal work - cutting wood, working in orchards or fish farming for carp and silver carp. About 300 people are involved in social programs for temporary employment. Still, except for a dozen families, the Roma population from the "Renaissance" ghetto of Nikolaevo languishes in misery. The river Tundzha, which flows right next to the Roma settlement, floods the houses at the outer edge of the ghetto, called "the dike" - 70 adobe houses "at the bottom of the bottom."

In response, the mayor explains: “The terrain is not a regulated plot so there is no way to invest in its development. The only possible solution is adopting a General structure plan and including the terrain in the urban boundaries so that we can invest in improvements. Let us begin with the streets, the renovation of which we are now illegally supporting. In the future we would like to invest in education for the children of the Roma settlement.” Now 10,000 euros is on the way from Brussels to help pave the streets and install solar streetlights. “We already installed three or four. We want to put more and build a little stadium so that people could practice sports rather than just hang around,” the mayor said.

He also stated that since 1991, some members of the Roma population in the municipality have earned their living by trading their children. That’s how Maria ended up in Greece. The little girl still waits for the decision of the court in Greece. “Trafficking of children flourishes in the region,” they say in Nikolaevo – the Roma population in the surrounding region of Stara Zagora, Nova Zagora and Kazanlak is around 100,000.