“Wherever we may go we carry Bulgaria in our hearts”, “I love my country”. To some these words may sound like a cliché, but when you hear them said by children, that makes all the difference.

This year’s edition of the three children’s competitions of the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad (SABA) shows that the number of children taking part in them has been growing, as has the number of countries participation applications are submitted from. This year children from 40 countries, some of them quite surprising, vied for the top places in the categories “best writer”, “best artist”, “best singer”. SABA chairman Petar Haralampiev gave as an example the fine arts competition “Bulgaria in my dreams”, for which pictures were received for the first time from Indonesia, New Zealand and Turkey. Singling out the three finalists in the “Lyubka Rondova” song contest was, without doubt, particularly difficult, as the contestants were extraordinarily talented. According to the contest rules one of the songs has to be folklore, and the other – the contestant’s own choice, but both have to be sung in the Bulgarian language. One of the award winners is 15-year old Yoana Bankova who is taking part for the second time:

“I have been living in Great Britain for 14 years and I miss Bulgaria and everything here very much. I learnt Bulgarian at the Bulgarian school which I have attended since I was 5, and I learnt to sing in Bulgarian in Dobrich, with my teacher Elena Karavelyova. I studied pop and rock singing with her. I took part last year but didn’t win a prize, this year I am an award winner. Folk singing is new to me, so I sang a pop arrangement of a folk song, and my second song was “My country” by Vessy Boneva.”

The “Stefan Gechev” literary contest which has been held since the Agency has been in existence also singled out the three best essays, inspired by the pure love of the children for their country. A total of 13,000 children living abroad have taken part in the three competitions to date. The prizes are important to them because they are an indication that though they may be far from their country, Bulgaria has not forgotten its children and endeavours to foster their talents. The efforts different Bulgarian organizations, and the weekend schools have been making to keep the Bulgarian spirit alive have not gone unnoticed by the Bulgarians living in other countries, who say they are grateful to school teachers and headmasters who have opted to work for a cause, at times setting aside their own needs. Iveta Ivanova, whose two daughters won drawing awards:

“I have been living in Naples for 15 years. The children go to the Bulgarche school there. There are 35 children from Bulgaria studying at the school, and it is one of the biggest in Italy. I would like to thank headmistress Pepa Stefanova for her efforts – the power we, Bulgarians carry is much more tangible when we are abroad than when I come back to Bulgaria. Perhaps it is the things that we miss that push us forward to do more, to be stronger. There is such a big difference since the children started learning about Bulgarian culture at this school. They live in an Italian environment, at times they refused to talk in Bulgarian, but since they started coming to the school they have changed. They learnt how to work together, they have learnt a lot about Bulgarian traditions. We make martenitsas, survachkas at Christmas, they talk about Bulgarian history.”