Bulgarians in USA – Bulgaria is Your Right
For many years, the Bulgarians abroad were discriminated against by their homeland when it comes to important political changes. The limited number of polling stations by law, and the harsh insults that “they are not allowed to be decision makers from a distance” are just the tip of the iceberg.
That is why we in Paragraph 42, together with community “Bulgarians in USA”, have launched a campaign to mobilize Bulgarians abroad to vote in the parliamentary elections on April 4th 2021.
The initiative was called “Bulgaria is your right” and included a number of materials such as posters, flyers and videos. They were uploaded on a special platform to be used as means that helped everyone abroad to state their position – that they are part of Bulgarian society and have the right to participate in the future of their homeland. This message ignited a spark and thousands of people distributed the materials we created, both online and physically. The flame of inspiration was also noticed by the media in Bulgaria, which kept looking for us for TV appearances, interviews, media publications etc.
Without a budget, but with a very strong insight and message, we created a campaign that literally traveled the planet to motivate Bulgarians to line up in front of polling stations and break a 20-year election record.
And we succeeded! As a result of the campaign, we have a record number of Bulgarians who voted abroad – 180,000 people compared to 117,000 in the previous parliamentary elections.