33 Bulgarian Sunday schools and 8 Bulgarian lecture halls in foreign universities prepared materials that tell about unknown facts from the life and work of significant Bulgarian personalities and events in Bulgaria and abroad. All of them are part of the National Program of the Ministry of Education and Culture “The Untold Stories of the Bulgarians” and were presented today at a large-scale forum in the presence of Vice President Iliana Yotova, Minister of Education and Science Prof. Galin Tsokov, Minister of Culture Nayden Todorov and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivan Kondov.
The event started with a presentation of a 20-minute film – a kaleidoscope that showed all the materials created by the program. Among them were short excerpts from the film about the grandchildren of the great composer Pancho Vladigerov – Ekaterina, Alexander and Konstantin, who today rule the music scene in Vienna, as well as a projection for the world-famous artist Prof. Stoimen Stoilov.
„The program and the forum are an inspiration. We saw the results and the year-long work of dozens of students from different parts of the world. What they have done makes us feel proud Bulgarians”, Minister Tsokov said in his greeting. He thanked the dozens of teachers, students and lecturers in Bulgarian language abroad, who presented finished products for the life of great Bulgarians. In his words “The untold stories of the Bulgarians” is one of the conceptual programs of the Ministry of Education and Culture, because it preserves the ancestral memory and gives the opportunity, based on the research of students, to enrich our history of the contribution of Bulgarians all over the world.
„The program is a new learning model that goes from reproducing knowledge to forming skills and competences through participation and experience. It also provides a new approach to education in patriotism, which focuses on learning by making and researching products with historical and cultural value, Minister Tsokov specified. “This is the meaning of modern education – for children to feel motivated and useful, that they reach the souls and hearts of many people. This inspires them and makes them be even more successful," he added.
During the current academic year, the program is being implemented again, but now with an expanded scope. Bulgarian schools and Sunday institutions abroad are given the opportunity to create joint projects. “The team will leave us an idea for creating a program aimed entirely at Bulgarian schools, to tell about the unknown surrounding the great Bulgarians in the country”, added Prof. Tsokov.
„We are considering that over time the program will grow into the creation of an innovative subject on patriotism and the study of ancestral memory in innovative schools,”, the minister also said. The idea is to initially introduce the new subject as an innovation, and then eventually become a subject in all schools in the country. “This should be an integrated subject between history, geography, political and social sciences, civic education, through which we can not only raise proud Bulgarians, but also prepare young people with more competences”, explained Prof. Tsokov.
The head of the minister's office Nataliya Michalevska noted that the program inspires young people to find their own identity and create. “To open their hearts and work so that their stories are in the textbooks, in the libraries, in the museums and in the archives,”, she said.
Under the national program, a total of over 40 studies have been prepared by students from Sunday schools and lecturers from foreign universities in 18 countries, who research genealogical histories of significant personalities or events of the past. They are extremely diverse (films, books, presentations, reports). These are unknown stories about Bulgarians from Moldova, Serbia, Romania, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Brazil, France, Spain, Croatia, Austria, the Netherlands, etc.
Viewers learned unknown facts about the Bulgarian traces in Saarland, about the life of Yordan Yovkov in Bucharest, as well as about other forgotten stories that today “came to life” in the Archaeological Museum.
During the event with the special distinction “Awakening“ Veneta Nenkova from BU “Asen and Ilia Peikovi“ – as the program's inspiration. The ambassadors of the initiative were also present, including the writer and translator Zdravka Evtimova, the Bulgarian composer and instrumentalist Haigashod Agasyan, the translator of Hungarian poetry and prose Svetla Köseva, the lecturer in Bulgarian language and literature at the University of Athens and many others.
The event was attended by the Deputy Ministers of Education and Science Dr. Emilia Lazarova and Natalia Miteva, the Chief of Staff of the Vice-President Nadia Mladenova, representatives of the people, the Chairman of the SBU Dr. Yanka Takeva, the Chairman of the SRSNPB Diyan Stamatov, directors of directorates in the Ministry of Education and Culture, experts, etc.
You can watch today's program materials on the Ministry of Education and Culture's YouTube channel.