Bulgarians from 18 countries, 34 schools abroad, and 8 Bulgarian lecturers from universities abroad are the participants in the first year of the "Untold Stories of the Bulgarians" National Program, which seeks out little-known facts about noteworthy Bulgarians or events from the past and today. The initiative of the Ministry of Education and Science is implemented with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and BAS.

On November 12, at a special forum in the National Archaeological Institute with a museum at BAS, a 20-minute video was presented, showing the contributions of each of the participants in the program.

"It is about a conceptual program that the Ministry of Education is developing. Through a new model of training and education, the ancestral memory is being preserved for the Bulgarians who live and work abroad," Minister of Education Galin Tsokov said at the opening of the discussion forum. A database is being created, which will be used and expanded. The program will be opened to schools in Bulgaria next year.

This is a very avant-garde program because in it the roles of adults and children are often changed, and here is the great merit of the teachers who work abroad, Vice President Iliana Iotova pointed out.

Today, the special "Probuda" Award, established by the Ministry of Education for research activities under the "Untold Stories of the Bulgarians" program, was presented.  Its first winner is Veneta Nenkova, founder of the "Asen and Ilia Peikov" school in Rome, for her valuable find - a document from 1624, discovered in the Vatican archives, from which it is clear that the first secular school in Bulgaria opened its doors in Chiprovtsi, exactly 400 years ago.