The Untold Stories of Bulgarians programme gathers the legacy of our compatriots as ancestral memory

A short video kaleidoscope of the "untold stories" of worthy Bulgarians - scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, artists - who have contributed to our country's good image in the eyes of the world opened an unconventional public forum that showcased the achievements of a groundbreaking Ministry of Education and Science education programme. It brings together the resources of all Bulgarian institutions with offices around the world, and sets long-term goals and added value regarding the education and upbringing of Bulgarian children who study in Bulgarian Sunday schools abroad.

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More importantly, the research work of our compatriots leads to new information about significant Bulgarians of the past and today from literally all parts of the world. Among them is Ivan Stancioff - a diplomat, philanthropist and founder and benefactor of the Bulgarian school in London. Another one is James Velkov - the Bulgarian who built two new towns on the then sparsely populated Spanish island of Tenerife. Little known is also the story of those 13 Bulgarians from Tsarigrad (present-day Istanbul) who founded the Turkish (then Ottoman) football club Galatasaray at the beginning of the 20th century, and among them was the legendary footballer Boris Nikolov aka the Bear, the first captain of the club team that still exists today.

There are hundreds more such "small" untold stories of Bulgarians around the world, and "when we make our big story about Bulgaria, that is when we will be able to answer the question - why is it important for every child in the world to identify as Bulgarian" - so explains the global context of the new educational programme the expert from the Ministry of Education Natalia Mihalevska. She is the driving force behind the initiative on the part of the state institution and after three years of active work on the programme Michalevska summarises that this mission - proclaiming Bulgarian interests to the world - requires a lot of work, daily efforts, "and above all a lot of education, motivation and renunciation of selfishness. It also requires goodwill and understanding with others".

The programme is national and educational, precisely because it intertwines the small and the big, the personal and the national stories of Bulgaria, to find them through your own life, wherever you are in the world, says Natalia Mihalevska, explaining the motives for the launch in 2022 of the work on the "The Untold Stories of the Bulgarians" national programme.

The work on the programme involves the work of 8 lecturers - professors in Bulgarian studies from the academic community abroad. Especially for the presentation of "The Untold Stories of the Bulgarians" in Sofia many of our compatriots from Greece, Italy, Great Britain, Hungary arrived in Sofia especially for the presentation of "The Untold Stories of Bulgarians", who are passionate about its implementation. Another 40 or so teachers from Bulgarian Sunday schools in Europe and America demonstrated their commitment to what was going on in the hall through an internet connection.

This public-educational forum, organized by the Ministry of Education and Science, took place on the snowy morning of November 12 at the National Archaeological Museum in Sofia - a place that can rightly be defined as "the vault of Bulgarian historical heritage". Thus, among the sculptures and monuments of antiquity we saw the laying of the foundations, symbolically, of a new, more educated Bulgaria, which knows its roots and collects its heritage bequeathed by more than one generation of Bulgarians scattered around the world.

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Thanks to this programme, part of the work of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is becoming visible, because diplomatic missions and overseas missions are also involved in helping the Untold Stories of the Bulgarians.

"The history science in Bulgaria is in a certain debt to the personal and ancestral memory as a historical source, that is why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomes this National Programme of the Ministry of Education and Culture," said the caretaker Foreign Minister Ivan Kondov. "Through their narrative, history becomes more personal, more human and more understandable, something that can hardly be captured in historical chronicles."

"This programme is also a new way of learning, which we hope to be able to introduce in Bulgarian schools", said Vanya Balcheva, Head of the Directorate "Education of Bulgarians Abroad and School Network" at the Ministry of Education and Science. When we announced the programme, Prof. Galin Tsokov, the Minister of Education and Science, said that this was a new concept for Bulgarian education. This means practical education and giving children, pupils and students the opportunity to participate and create more, i.e. to be the active party, to explore and learn by experiencing facts and events from history."

And if the Ministry of Education is the institutional organizer of the programme, the driving force on the ground are all the teachers, students and families of Bulgarians abroad who participated in the creation of the production, part of which is now available on the Ministry's Youtube channel.

The programme has stimulated the research curiosity of dozens of young people around the world. Gencho Banev, lecturer in Bulgarian language and culture at the National University of Athens, gives us an example in this respect. He also engages his Greek students in research on little-known facts of Bulgarian history and even encourages them to pursue Bulgarian studies academically. And one more curious fact Gencho Bonchev reports after the start of the program - twice as many students have enrolled to study Bulgarian at the University of Athens, attracted by their practical realization in the program "The Untold Stories of Bulgarians".

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"Developing our project at the University of Athens, which was related to historical memory, we called it "First Encounters" and we created a bilingual website - in Greek and in Bulgarian - entitled "Graecobulgarica", with the idea that through it we would give a comprehensive presentation of the Greek view of Bulgaria in cultural, academic and literary terms. The idea was to find those stories that are very important but have remained out of sight of the mainstream historiography. Such a story, for example, is the visit of Prince Battenberg in 1883 at the invitation of the Greek king to Athens - he had the idea to offer cooperation, and for a meeting of a personal nature. This was the first large-scale diplomatic mission of a Bulgarian ruler after the Liberation. And Greek officials of the time noted that it was the most significant diplomatic event of the year in their country."