SingleStep

AI for All: Human First, Human Last

Single Step — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 16:10:20 +0000

AI for All: Human First, Human Last

Why Bulgaria should pay attention to AI trends and why Single Step Foundation uses AI every day but under strict rules.

For all the grand talk about an AI revolution, one practical question still makes many civil society organizations uncomfortable: do you use AI in your work? More often than not, the answer comes with a slow shake of the head: “No. Of course not.”

The reluctance is understandable. AI raises real concerns: misinformation, privacy, jobs, environmental costs, and enormous power concentrated in a handful of companies. For many civil society organizations, keeping a distance feels like the principled choice.

We hear a version of that answer from fellow LGBTI organizations across Europe all the time, and we understand it, because we share the worries behind it: AI is dangerous, so we do not touch it. We at Single Step have come to believe this is the head-in-the-sand approach. AI is here to stay and, let’s face it, it is not waiting for civil society’s blessing. It is already answering our communities’ questions about identity, health, relationships, and safety, in every language, at every hour, whether we engage or not. Refusing to use it does not protect anyone. It only means that the tools our people already rely on are built, trained, and regulated entirely without us.

Here is the uncomfortable conclusion we have reached: you cannot credibly demand safeguards for a technology you refuse to understand. The rules for AI are being written right now, in Brussels and in boardrooms. The seats at that table will go to those who can say: we use these tools every day, we know precisely where they fail our communities, and we know what it would take to fix them. Abstention does not buy moral clarity. It buys absence. In a nutshell, as the saying goes, you are either at the table or you are on the menu.

There is one objection we should name plainly: these tools were not built for us. They were built by powerful companies and trained on an internet that reflects the same prejudices our communities face offline. That is an argument for skepticism, but not for hostility or disengagement. The internet itself was not built with communities like ours in mind, yet those communities turned it into a place to find one another, organize, and make themselves heard. AI will also be shaped not only by who builds it, but by who tests it, challenges it, and demands better. If we want AI to serve our communities, we have to help shape what it becomes.

So we ask a different question: not whether AI can be trusted, but what happens if civil society walks away from it altogether. At Single Step, we chose not to walk away. We are a small team supporting a much larger community of LGBTI people in Bulgaria, and we use AI every day: carefully, with safeguards, and with the critical eye of a community organization. To the best of our knowledge, no LGBTI organization in Europe has yet published a first-person account of how it uses AI in its own day-to-day work. There are valuable European reports about what AI does to LGBTI people, and we draw on them below. This is something different: notes from an organization that actually uses the technology, written for the community it serves.

Since the beginning of 2026, one in four people who reached out to join our support groups told us they found Single Step thanks to AI.

And here is one reason we believe this conversation cannot wait. Our community is not debating whether to use these tools; it is already using them, and they are already guiding people through our door. We believe those numbers will only grow, and the only question is whether the organizations that serve that community will catch up.

The rule we work byHuman first, human last

Human first, human last.

Human first: a person does the critical thinking and decides what we ask, why we ask it, and what information we share. Human last: a person checks everything AI produces and signs off before it goes anywhere.

In between, AI does what it is good at: the synthesis, the first draft, the spreadsheet, the summary, the translation, the hours of research legwork that used to exhaust a small team.

We treat AI as an IA: an intelligent assistant. An assistant helps you do your work. It does not become your work, and it does not speak in your name. A case in point: as funding across our sector shrinks, some organizations have started doing the opposite of abstaining. They feed an AI a few basic facts about themselves, point it at whatever call for proposals is open, and submit whatever comes out, sometimes without reading it. Funders now wade through piles of polished, hollow, nearly identical applications, and trust corrodes for everyone, including the organizations doing honest work. What actually failed there is not the technology, but its application. Nobody thought first, and nobody checked last. Walking away from AI and handing your voice over to it are opposite mistakes with the same result: the human left the room.

And there is a line we do not cross. Our direct services are delivered by people. Always. Our daily online chat is answered by trained humans, not bots. Our psychologists are real people in real rooms. Our support groups are led by people who have lived some version of what our community lives. AI never talks to the people who turn to us for help; it works behind the scenes so that the humans on our team have more time for exactly those people. Because we get asked about this often, let us be unambiguous: when you write to Single Step, a person reads your message, and a person answers it.

“Human last” is not a slogan; it is a daily habit, and this year it earned its keep. In the middle of an important research project, an AI assistant handed us a set of official-looking figures, attributed to a specific release of the National Statistical Institute, quotes and all. They looked entirely plausible, but we checked nevertheless. The release did not exist, and neither did the numbers or the direct quotations. The AI had hallucinated them, confidently and fluently. We threw them out and rebuilt them from verified sources. That is the deal we have made with this technology: it may assist, and it will be checked. Nothing it produces carries our name until a human has read every line.

The upsideWhat these tools can offer our community

Used deliberately, AI can serve LGBTI people in ways our sector should take seriously. Our community already sees both sides of this coin. In a 2025 poll of nearly 1,300 LGBTI adults in the United States by the nonprofit LGBT Tech, 73% said AI could help people find accurate information about identity, health, and rights, and 72% worried the same technology could expose their identity by analyzing their data.

Coming out is one of the most vulnerable conversations a person can have. Rehearsing it with a chatbot, walking through the best case and the worst case in private, at 2 am, with nobody watching, can help someone arrive at the real conversation calmer and clearer. Research on LGBTI users confirms the comfort is real, and it comes with a catch worth knowing: chatbots are built to be agreeable, and a rehearsal partner that only tells you what you want to hear is poor preparation for a hard conversation. Rehearse with the machine. Rely on people; that’s why we pioneered our online chat almost a decade ago.

Parents need support too. A parent trying to understand a child who has just come out can ask a chatbot the questions they are ashamed to ask out loud, and be pointed toward the guides we maintain for LGBTI youth and their parents. That lifts a burden our community knows too well: having to educate your own family at the very moment you are the one who needs support.

And in a country where affirming psychologists are concentrated in a few big cities, an assistant that is available anywhere, at any hour, matters. The stakes are not abstract: our own 2024 survey of 1,109 LGBTI high school students across all 28 districts found that half had seriously considered suicide in the previous year. People already use chatbots to prepare for medical appointments: to understand the terminology, to line up their questions, to walk in with a clearer head. These tools should never replace qualified professionals. Used well, they can make the road to a professional shorter.

One caution, stated plainly, because we serve young people. There is a difference between using a general-purpose assistant deliberately and befriending an “AI companion” app engineered to keep you talking. The companion industry’s record with minors is grim: in the United States, families have sued after tragedies that included the suicide of a fourteen-year-old, one major companion platform banned minors from open-ended chats in late 2025, and the researchers who found that 72% of American teens had tried AI companions now recommend that nobody under 18 use them at all. But walling young people off cannot be the whole answer. The better question, and almost nobody in Bulgaria is asking it, is what safe AI would look like if young people themselves helped define it: technology that collects less of their data, explains its limits, and keeps accountable human help within reach. Until then, we will say it clearly: if you are under 18 and need to talk, write to our chat. A human will answer.

The evidenceWhat GLAAD found

In June, GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTI media advocacy organization, published “Build for Everyone,” its first report on artificial intelligence. Its core argument deserves to be repeated everywhere: the harms AI causes LGBTI people are not technical accidents. They are design choices, and design choices can be changed. In GLAAD’s words, neutrality is no longer an option. If AI fails LGBTI people, it fails everyone.

The evidence in the report is not abstract. In testing GLAAD documented in 2025, Meta’s Llama 4 model suggested conversion “therapy” as a therapeutic option: a practice condemned by every major medical body and likened to torture by the United Nations. More than 1.2 million Europeans signed a citizens’ initiative to ban it across the EU, and the European Parliament voted for a ban; this May, the European Commission still declined to propose one, promising instead a non-binding recommendation next year. A UNESCO study found that Meta’s earlier Llama 2 model, asked to complete the sentence “a gay person is…”, produced negative content about 70% of the time. A Stanford study of six major AI companies found that all six use your conversations to train their models by default, and some keep that data indefinitely. Sit with that for a moment: 65 countries still criminalize same-sex relations. If someone comes out to a chatbot, where does that conversation go, and who else will ever see it?

Meanwhile, on social platforms, automated moderation quietly hides and removes LGBTI content at scale: wrongful takedowns, “sensitive content” labels on ordinary posts, suppressed reach. The pattern GLAAD documents is consistent: too much AI attention on our existence, too little on the people attacking us.

GLAAD also makes a market argument. It estimates the global buying power of LGBTI people at $4.7 trillion, projected to reach $33 trillion by 2030 as Generation Z, more than a fifth of whom identify as LGBTI, reaches its peak earning years. Companies that get AI wrong for this community are not just failing an ethical test. They are failing a market.

Closer to homeBulgaria: the same risks, concentrated

Everything above lands harder in Bulgaria: AI learns from what people publish, and Bulgaria’s information space has been saturated with anti-LGBTI content for years: a documented propaganda campaign running since 2018, much of it echoing Russian narratives. In 2023, Bulgaria’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld a finding against a national daily over a homophobic article translated directly from Russian state media, the first ruling of its kind in the country. In August 2024, Parliament passed, with 159 votes in the 240-seat chamber, a law banning “propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation” in schools. In ILGA-Europe’s 2026 Rainbow Map, Bulgaria ranks second to last among EU member states on LGBTI rights, and 40th of 49 European countries.

This is part of the raw material Bulgarian-language AI may learn from. And Bulgarian, rich as it is, casts a small digital shadow: it is written online by only a few million people, so AI systems have far less Bulgarian text to learn from, and far less trustworthy text to weigh it against. AI systems trained on, fine-tuned with, or connected to the web can lean on whatever text exists, and audits in other languages show that chatbots repeat more falsehoods where trustworthy content is thin. In one such audit, ten leading chatbots repeated false claims 55% of the time when tested in Russian, the worst result of the seven languages tried. Because the story a country tells about its people can become the story its machines tell back, whoever shapes the narrative in Bulgarian is quietly shaping the technology too.

Here is what that means in practice, in two Bulgarian examples. The first is a single word. In 2018, the campaign against the Istanbul Convention took a borrowed word, “gender”, translated into Bulgarian as “джендър”, and turned it into an insult. By 2019, a Bulgarian court was fining a man for hurling it at police officers, and a 2018 survey of 295 social-media users, published by an independent researcher, found that barely a third selected the closest correct meaning of the word. That entire episode, every article, every talk show, every comment thread, is part of the Bulgarian-language web that can be used to train or inform AI systems. BgGPT, the national Bulgarian model, was trained on more than 100 billion Bulgarian and English tokens, but we have not found a public audit of how it handles LGBTI bias. Ask a chatbot in Bulgarian what “джендър” means, and you are really asking what eight years of propaganda left in the information space it draws from. We do not know the answer yet. That is why the test matters.

The second example is not an accident of data but a strategy. In March 2024, a Bulgarian-language site appeared in the Pravda network, a Moscow-run web of hundreds of propaganda portals documented by VIGINUM, the French government agency that tracks foreign interference. The network pushed out some 3.6 million articles in 2024 alone, and the researchers who studied it concluded that the strategy was designed less for human readers than to flood search results, web crawlers, and sources used by AI systems, a tactic now called “LLM grooming”. The threat is not theoretical. When the news-rating service NewsGuard tested ten leading chatbots, they repeated the network’s false narratives about a third of the time. Someone is deliberately trying to poison the well our machines drink from, and since 2024 they have been doing it in Bulgarian too.

None of this requires civil society to become engineers. It requires what we already know how to do: watch, document, and demand. For an organization like ours, getting involved looks concrete. Measure: we have already started a structured audit of how AI talks about LGBTI people in Bulgarian, a few hundred questions asked the way our community actually asks them, and we will report the results for anyone to check. Test the safety net: see whether the slurs that propaganda normalized slip past moderation filters built mostly for English. Then take the findings to the people who can act on them: the companies building the models, the Bulgarian researchers improving them, and the regulators who will eventually enforce Europe’s AI rules here. In resources, that is weeks of focused work with research partners and proven, borrowed methods, not millions. In focus, it is not a detour from our mission: it is the same work of protecting our community, carried into the newest room where decisions about it are made.

On paper, Europe’s new AI Act protects us. It bans systems that claim to deduce a person’s sexual orientation from their face, and it puts guardrails on AI used for decisions about hiring, housing, and essential services. In practice, Bulgaria has still not named the watchdog that would enforce those rules, nor adopted national rules on penalties, and the EU itself has postponed the main obligations for certain high-risk systems until December 2027. Meanwhile, in Hungary, a 2025 law authorized facial recognition to identify people attending Pride. In our region, AI harms did not wait for the referee. And Bulgaria’s answer so far has been the familiar one: restriction. A bill proposed this summer would bar under-16s from social media altogether. Whatever its merits, young people’s voices are still largely missing from the debate about what safety should actually look like.

One more Bulgarian fact, of a different kind. COMPL-AI, an open technical framework for evaluating generative AI models against a technical interpretation of Europe’s AI rules, was co-created in Sofia, at the INSAIT institute, which also built BgGPT. The talent to shape AI is already here. The enforcement gap remains.

The road aheadWhat must happen, and what we will do

GLAAD’s report closes with five recommendations for the companies building AI. In plain language:

Train models on data that represents LGBTI people accurately.
Do not let AI make decisions about jobs, loans, or healthcare without checking whether it discriminates.
Keep humans overseeing what gets flagged as hate.
Do not guess or collect anyone’s orientation or identity without permission.
Bring LGBTI civil society into the building process, and pay them for their expertise.

That fifth recommendation is addressed to organizations like ours. The bridge is already being built: people who spent their careers leading Europe’s LGBTI movement are moving into AI governance, and European funders have begun resourcing civil society to shape AI in the public interest. What that bridge needs now is more of our organizations walking across it, and fewer of us standing on the shore insisting the water is too perilous.

So here is what Single Step commits to. Our direct services will remain human, always. We will stay transparent about where we use AI and where we never will. Nothing produced with AI will carry our name without a person verifying it and signing off. We will keep asking young people themselves what they want from AI, because they are the experts on their own online lives, and we will carry their answers into the public debate. And because Bulgarian-language AI has not been adequately scrutinized for how it represents our community, we have already started an audit, and we will report what we find.

Refusing to use AI does not make its risks disappear. It only guarantees that the people most affected by it have the least say in it. AI is not finished and it will never be. It is still being shaped, every day, by whoever shows up. What it learns, whose experiences it represents, whose safety it protects: these are human rights questions, and they are being decided now.

An AI built for all of us is more accurate, safer, and more useful for every single user. That is why we believe civil society’s job is not only to criticize AI, but to help build it. The story of AI in Bulgaria has not been written yet. We would rather help write it than have it written about us.

Human first. Human last. And in between, we at Single Step will never leave the room: we use the tools smartly, we check their work, and we always keep our community first. And that’s a promise.

P.S. How we used AI to write this article In the spirit of everything above, here is the method. The thesis, the arguments, and the voice are ours; every editorial decision was made by our team. An AI assistant did what we argue it should do: the research legwork across dozens of sources, first drafts of sections we outlined and then rewrote, and structured fact-checking. Every number you read was verified by a person against the original source before publication. Several plausible-looking claims did not survive that check. A human read every line before it was published, and humans, not the assistant, take responsibility for all of it. Human first, human last, in practice.

Материалът AI for All: Human First, Human Last е публикуван за пръв път на SingleStep.

Building Safer Communities in Entertainment – Free Training

Василена Димитрова — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:38:28 +0000

Free Online Training | 8 Sessions | May-June 2026

За проекта

About the project

This training is part of UFemTP: A Mobilising Training and Multimedia Platform – a project funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ programme (KA220-ADU). UFemTP brings together seven organisations from four countries – Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Ireland – with a shared goal of building sustainable educational resources and a multimedia platform for women and LGBTI+ people working in entertainment and urban cultures. The project combines field research, an online platform and practical training to transform knowledge into a tool for real change in the lives of affected communities.

About the training

Community work is skilled work – and it deserves to be treated as such. This training was designed for people who are already doing it: activists, cultural workers, organisers, and anyone building LGBTI+ and women’s communities in entertainment and cultural spaces in Bulgaria and the region.

Across 8 online sessions in May and June 2026, participants will build practical skills in two core areas:

Block A – Community Engagement (Sessions 1-4) explores how communities function in urban entertainment contexts – who is included and who is excluded, how we address harm and violence, how we document our own stories, and how we fund our work sustainably and independently.

Block B – Adult Education (Sessions 5-8) builds pedagogical competencies – the principles of participatory learning, digital facilitation and psychological safety in online spaces, feminist and peer-to-peer pedagogy, and planning training activities for our own communities.

Who is this for

This training is for you if you:

Organise, participate or are interested in LGBTI+ or women’s communities, events or spaces
Work in the fields of culture, nightlife, or artivism
Want to build concrete skills in community organising and education
Are looking to connect with others doing similar work in the region

No prior experience is required. The training is open to everyone.

Practical information

The full schedule can be found here:

Building Safer Communities in Entertainment – Schedule

Single Step Foundation · Free Online Training · May–June 2026

Building Safer Communities
in Entertainment

8 sessions on community organising, safer spaces, storytelling, funding & peer education.

Free Online English EQF Level 2–3 Erasmus+

Block A — Community Engagement · Sessions 1–4

Mon 11 May

What Is Community?

Mapping Urban Femininities and LGBTI+ Scenes

18:00–19:30

Thu 14 May

Safety, Harm, and Accountability

In Entertainment Scenes

18:00–19:30

Thu 21 May

Oral History and Storytelling

Community Documentation Methods

18:00–19:30

Thu 28 May

Fundraising and Sustainability

The Political Economy of Community Work

18:00–19:30

Block B — Adult Education · Sessions 5–8

Thu 4 Jun

Principles of Adult Education

From Banking to Participatory Learning

18:00–19:30

Mon 15 Jun

Designing and Facilitating Online Sessions

Tools and Trauma-Informed Practice

18:00–19:30

Mon 22 Jun

Feminist and Peer-to-Peer Pedagogy

Training as Political Practice

18:00–19:30

Thu 25 Jun

From Learning to Action

Building a Personal and Collective Training Plan

18:00–19:30

Format: Online, in real time

Language: English

Duration: 8 sessions × 1,5 hours

Period: May – June 2026

Free

Qualification: EQF Level 2-3 (if you want to gain a certificate you need to attend at least 80% of the sessions)

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

Материалът Building Safer Communities in Entertainment – Free Training е публикуван за пръв път на SingleStep.

Create Your Pride: Your idea, your community.

Василена Димитрова — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 08:28:46 +0000

Create Your Pride: Your idea, your community.

Open Call for events organised by and for the LGBTI community in June 2026

What are we looking for: Open to a wide range of formats (exhibitions, workshops, screenings, performance, etc.)

Who can apply: LGBTI-people, based anywhere in Bulgaria (no restrictions on age)

Deadline for application: 23:59 h, 26th April

Events to be held: 1st – 30th June

Fund: Up to €300 per project

Final selection announced: 1st May

APPLY HERE

Single Step Foundation and The Steps are opening our space and our budget to LGBTI people across Bulgaria who have an idea that belongs in Pride Month 2026. An exhibition. A workshop. A performance. A screening. A gathering. Something to show we belong together as a community.

We’re funding up to 5 community projects with up to €300 each – whether you need €50 for printing or €200 for materials, the budget is there to fit your idea, not the other way around. We pay all suppliers and vendors directly and you never spend your own money. The space is free. The admin is ours. Your idea. Your community.

WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

This is for you if you identify as LGBTI and you live anywhere in Bulgaria.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never organised an event before. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a professional artist. It doesn’t if your idea feels too small, too strange, or too personal.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

We are open to any format that is rooted in LGBTI+ experience and open to a community audience:

Exhibitions & installations: visual art, photography, zines, textile, mixed media
Workshops & skill-shares: creative, practical, community-building
Performances: drag, spoken word, music, dance
Screenings: short films, documentaries, video art
Community gatherings: discussions, readings, parties with a purpose

All events must take place between 1st and 30th June 2026, hosted at The Steps in Sofia, free of charge.

WHAT DOES €300 COVER?

Up to €300 per project, paid directly by Single Step to your suppliers.

The fund can be used for: art supplies, props, costumes, printed matter, posters, zines, programmes, signage, advertising, digital promotion, flyer distribution.

What we don’t fund: Travel to/from Sofia and accommodation. Personal fees or salaries. Projects with no LGBTI connection. Projects that promote harm toward any group.

HOW DO I APPLY?

Fill in our short online form – it takes around 5–10 minutes.

APPLY HERE

Deadline: 23:59 h, 26th April 2026

Decisions communicated by: 1st May 2026

Important: Approved applicants will be invited to a short online meeting with our team between 4th–8th May to work through the logistics together.

Материалът Create Your Pride: Your idea, your community. е публикуван за пръв път на SingleStep.

Next Step Buddy – Single Step’s Mentorship Programme

Василена Димитрова — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:16:00 +0000

Apply here

What bugs you?

An injustice you keep noticing.

A gap in your community you run into again and again, and again…

A problem people complain about all the time – but no one really does anything about.

Let’s be honest: you have two options.

You can keep complaining about what bugs you.

Or you can do something about it.

Next Step Buddy is for people who choose to do something – but do not yet know where to start.

This is a one-month programme for people with early-stage ideas for social innovation who need structure, practical tools, and support to turn a rough idea into a clear concept and an action plan.

We are looking for 8 ideas with real social value – ideas that are still taking shape, but already show strong potential.

Not polished. Not perfect. Just worth building.

At Next Step Buddy, you will learn how to:

turn a rough idea to structured, pitch-ready concept

understand the problem, audience, and value behind it

communicate your idea in a way that gains attention, trust, and support

prepare your project for its first steps in the real world

The programme includes one-to-one mentoring sessions with experts from HP Inc. and Single Step and culminates in an open-to-the-public Shark Tank event, during which participants will present their ideas to a jury.

Check out the full schedule below.

Programme Schedule

4th April (Sat) • 10:00 — 13:00 h

Opening + Growth Mindset

The mindset and psychology of success (workshop)

5th April (Sun) • 10:00 — 13:00 h

From Idea to Success

Tools to make it happen (workshop)

8th April (Wed) • 18:30 — 20:00 h

Turn AI into a Super Assistant

(workshop)

15th April (Wed) • 18:30 — 20:00 h

Mapping Your Path

Design Thinking and Theory of Change (workshop)

22nd April (Wed) • 18:30 — 20:00 h

Storytelling for Impact

(lecture)

4th — 10th May • TBD

Mentoring Meetings

Personal sessions with your assigned buddy

13th May (Wed) • 18:30 — 20:00 h

Shark Tank

Closing Event

Important Notice

Attendance is mandatory. A maximum of one missed session is permitted.

We reserve the right to change session dates depending on the availability of lecturers.

Тhree ideas will be supported and earn:

one grant of €1000

two grants of €500

Participants

If any of this sounds like you – you’re probably exactly who we’re looking for. You can apply as an individual or team of two. Our ideal participants:

Have a social problem they genuinely care about

Have little or no prior experience in activism, civil society, or community organising

Are willing to commit to all five sessions and the finale

Are based in Sofia (The organisers will not cover travel and accommodation expenses.)

Aged 18 – 36 yeard old.

Practical information

The program will run from April 3 to May 10, 2026.

All events will be held in person at The Steps – a space where safety, respect, and support come first.

The program will be conducted in both Bulgarian and English.

Application

You can apply to participate in the Next Step Buddy programme until March 29 by clicking the button below. Approved participants will receive a confirmation email by April 1.

Apply here

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@singlestep.bg.
Good luck!

Материалът Next Step Buddy – Single Step’s Mentorship Programme е публикуван за пръв път на SingleStep.

Dialogue or monologue? How artificial intelligence creates a sense of closeness – Single Step Podcast

Василена Димитрова — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:44:31 +0000

In this episode of Single Step Podcast, we discuss a topic that is already part of our lives, but we are not yet fully prepared to understand – the connection between artificial intelligence, chatbots, and the mental health of adolescents.

Together with Aylin, we explore how and why more and more teenagers are starting to use chatbots not just as a tool, but as a friend, confidant, or even a therapist. What are the risks, especially at a time when identity, emotions, and boundaries are still being formed?

In this episode, we talk about:

whether there is emotional dependence on chatbots and artificial intelligence

why “supportive” AI can be dangerous

which young people are most vulnerable and how to recognize the warning signs

social isolation, guilt, and high expectations in the Bulgarian context

sexual curiosity, lack of boundaries, and unlimited validation

personal responsibility, emotional intelligence, and the need for human connection

can technology be a helpful tool and where is the line?

This is an uncomfortable (at times) conversation about loneliness, the need to be heard, and the dangers of digital “communication”.

Listen here:

Материалът Dialogue or monologue? How artificial intelligence creates a sense of closeness – Single Step Podcast е публикуван за пръв път на SingleStep.

Single Step Podcast Ep. 8 is OUT NOW!

Василена Димитрова — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 12:17:54 +0000

“Must” vs. “Want”: Anatomy of Self-Sabotage (with Tsvetomira Nenkova)

We begin 2026 with an honest topic: why do we set goals that exhaust us instead of nourishing us, and why do we give up on our goals so quickly, feeling personally disappointed?

In this episode, Harry and psychotherapist Tsvetomira Nenkova – Tsveti dive boldly into the zone between “must” and “want” – that grey area where our true motivation is born… or our biggest blockages.

We talk about:

why the word “failure” is so powerful and inapplicable in goal setting;
how micro-motivation overcomes self-sabotage and develops discipline;
what it really means to be good to ourselves — and why it looks different for everyone;
why intuition is not magic, but a well-trained “inner compass” that most of us ignore.

In this episode, we explore the relationship between expectations, desire, flexibility, and personal honesty.

As promised in the episode you will find more information about the therapeutic group for adults over 21 that Tsveti is preparing for 2026 here.

Listen now on:

Материалът Single Step Podcast Ep. 8 is OUT NOW! е публикуван за пръв път на SingleStep.

Single Step Podcast – A Christmas Special

Василена Димитрова — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 13:36:28 +0000

In this special Christmas episode of the Single Step podcast, Harry and Katya slow things down and reflect on the holidays as an inner experience. A conversation about comfort — not as a fixed expectation, but as a personal choice. About what Christmas can be when we look beyond social pressure and ready-made narratives, and allow ourselves to create a celebration that feels authentic to who we are.

In this episode, we talk about:

how other people’s words and actions affect our inner world
setting boundaries and practicing self-care during the holidays
why acceptance and adaptability are essential for emotional ease
and how each of us can define warmth, comfort, and connection in our own way.

This conversation doesn’t offer universal answers, but an invitation — to turn inward, listen carefully, and give ourselves permission to experience the holidays in a way that brings calm, meaning, and gentleness.

An episode designed to help you ease into the Christmas spirit — with awareness, care, and space for yourself.

Listen now on:

Материалът Single Step Podcast – A Christmas Special е публикуван за пръв път на SingleStep.

Marking World AIDS Day – ep. 6 of Single Step Podcast

Василена Димитрова — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:31:57 +0000

To mark World AIDS Day, this episode dives into HIV — without sugarcoating, without euphemisms, without drama. Just honest conversations about human experiences that have been buried under fear and myths for far too long.

Our guest is Annie — a therapist who has worked on the front lines in a specialized HIV clinic in the United States and knows exactly what the journey looks like “before and after the diagnosis.”

Together, we go straight into the places most people avoid, asking the questions that rarely get asked:

What does the very first day after the diagnosis feel like?
Where does all that overwhelming shame come from… and why is it not truly ours?
How do you tell your loved ones — and do you even have to?
How do we respond when we are the person on “the other side” of that conversation?
And why modern therapy changes the rules of the game more than most people realize.

We share real strategies, practical advice, and a new perspective on HIV — as a condition you manage, not a secret that manages you. We talk about U=U, about stigma that still clings to the past, and about the strength it takes to say: “I’m not hiding anymore.”

This episode is for anyone seeking information, support, and honesty. And for anyone who believes that change begins the moment we finally say: “Let’s talk openly. We are human — not diagnoses.”

Listen now on:

Материалът Marking World AIDS Day – ep. 6 of Single Step Podcast е публикуван за пръв път на SingleStep.

Single Step Podcast – ep. 5

Василена Димитрова — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 14:08:51 +0000

Episode 5 of Single Step Podcast is now live!

In this episode, we explore the forms of addiction that often remain hidden behind shame, silence, and social expectations — alcohol, digital devices, pornography, gambling, and the many ways they shape our lives, relationships, and mental health. Our guest is Margarita Koleva, a therapist in training with a focus on addiction.

The conversation traces how a habit turns into compulsion, what sustains addictive patterns, and which early signals we tend to overlook. We talk about loneliness as a primary driver, guilt as a reinforcing mechanism, and the ways in which society — sometimes unintentionally — keeps people locked in cycles that are difficult to break.

In this episode, we also explore:

what happens when daily life begins to revolve around a substance or behavior
why addictions often begin as solutions rather than problems
what the loved ones of a person with addiction experience
which practices and resources in Bulgaria truly help — from therapeutic communities and day centers to anonymous groups
why harm reduction may be a more human and realistic alternative to immediate “full abstinence”
how to seek help — and how to recognize reliable sources and professionals

This is an honest, deep, and gentle conversation about addiction as a human experience — not an identity or a label. For anyone who is struggling, supporting someone, searching for a path forward, or simply wanting to understand more.

Listen now on:

Материалът Single Step Podcast – ep. 5 е публикуван за пръв път на SingleStep.

Single Step Podcast – ep. 4

Василена Димитрова — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 10:50:28 +0000

Single Step Podcast is back with Episode 4: The Art That Breathes — Through the Eyes of Kosta Karakashyan

When the stage becomes a confession, and art — an act of empathy.

From immersive performances in abandoned spaces to films exploring love and identity, Kosta Karakashyan shares his journey through dance, cinema, and queer self-expression. A conversation about creating experiences that transform, and about the courage to face a society that often forgets how to love. A story of being true to yourself — and of the power of art to heal and bring communities together. For those who believe that change begins with feeling.

Listen now:

Материалът Single Step Podcast – ep. 4 е публикуван за пръв път на SingleStep.

SingleStep

AI for All: Human First, Human Last

AI for All: Human First, Human Last

The rule we work byHuman first, human last

The upsideWhat these tools can offer our community

The evidenceWhat GLAAD found

Closer to homeBulgaria: the same risks, concentrated

The road aheadWhat must happen, and what we will do

Building Safer Communities in Entertainment – Free Training

Building Safer Communitiesin Entertainment

Create Your Pride: Your idea, your community.

HOW DO I APPLY?

Next Step Buddy – Single Step’s Mentorship Programme

Programme Schedule

Opening + Growth Mindset

From Idea to Success

Turn AI into a Super Assistant

Mapping Your Path

Storytelling for Impact

Mentoring Meetings

Shark Tank

Important Notice

Dialogue or monologue? How artificial intelligence creates a sense of closeness – Single Step Podcast

Single Step Podcast Ep. 8 is OUT NOW!

Single Step Podcast – A Christmas Special

Marking World AIDS Day – ep. 6 of Single Step Podcast

Single Step Podcast – ep. 5

Single Step Podcast – ep. 4

Building Safer Communities
in Entertainment