"The Untold Stories of the Bulgarians programme was presented last year when the Association of Bulgarian Schools Abroad met in Karlovo. Over the course of the year, I understood that it had attracted a lot of interest from different countries where there are Bulgarian schools. So we accepted the challenge and the idea of Dr Radostina Stoyanova, a lecturer at the University of Belgrade, to work together on a project that we symbolically called "The Great and Forgotten Bulgarians in Serbia". 

We wanted to both research and popularise those renaissance Bulgarians who were either born in Serbia or, like Vasil Levski, travelled there to carry out part of their national liberation activities. I hope that this was interesting for the Serbian students, and I am very pleased that shortly before the event, these young Bulgarians, organised by their high school, also visited Karlovo. They had the opportunity to see the whole museum complex and other important places in Vasil Levski's hometown. In this way, the project ran in both directions - from Bulgaria to Serbia and from Serbia to Bulgaria - in different formats," explained Dora Chausheva.

She is also looking forward to the interesting texts written by students at the University of Belgrade on the topic, which will be published in an upcoming book edition. The book will include stories about the historical ties and shared cultural heritage between the two countries, as well as the individuals who contributed to Bulgaria's national liberation movement during the Renaissance.

"This conference has neither managed to summarise the stories of the remarkable Bulgarians in Serbia, nor has it had the task of exhausting everything related to them - points out Prof. Tsenka Ivanova. - Such a project has yet to unfold, and in the following periods the focus should also be on people who in the very recent past have contributed to this different view of the told or untold stories of both Bulgarians and the Serbian-Bulgarian dialogue".