In the Headlines

A total of 76 ideas took shape at the Teenovator Ideas Weekend 2022 in January, all of them showing considerable creativity and promise. Not only do they attempt to tackle challenges in novel ways, but also three out of every four projects employ new technologies to resolve a problem.

The America for Bulgaria Foundation announces a request for proposals (RFP) for the development of rural tourism in Northern Bulgaria. The RFP is held in partnership with the Embassy of Italy in Bulgaria, the Italian Trade and Investment Agency, LocalFood.bg/Pendara Foundation, Devetaki Plateau Association, and Traventuria.

Bulgarian journalist and Anticorruption Fund cofounder Nikolay Staykov received a 2021 Anticorruption Champions Award from the United States Department of State.

The sixteenth edition of the annual Corporate Donor Competition of the Bulgarian Donors Forum honored socially engaged companies that were most actively involved in the COVID-19 response and in the efforts to resolve the healthcare and social problems deepened by the pandemic.

In September 2021, representatives of the America for Bulgaria Foundation undertook a study visit to Belene Island, a place of contradictions — of natural beauty but also of painful memory. Together with friends from the diplomatic corps, Sofia Platform, Belene Island Foundation and local representatives, we commemorated the victims of the communist regime. We also had a memorable encounter with camp survivor Tsvetana Dzhermanova, whose time in the Belene and Bosna camps is detailed in her memoir Memories of the Camps.

The largest volunteering platform in Bulgaria, TimeHeroes, helps companies build better, smarter CSR strategies. They found five surefire ways businesses can reenergize their teams and keep top performers, ultimately improving their bottom lines as well.  

Three design proposals received distinctions in the Thracian Treasures request for proposals of the America for Bulgaria Foundation. Conducted in partnership with Vratsa Municipality and the Regional History Museum of Vratsa, the RFP aims to generate ideas for the redesign of the Thracian Treasures standing exhibition at the Regional History Museum in Vratsa.

Bulgaria was an improbable choice as a home to an American educational institution, at least in 1989, and no one remembers who exactly came up with the idea of setting up an American university there, as political science professor Robert Phillips Jr. writes in his 2021 book The American University… Where?, which inspired our headline.  

The transformative role of digital technologies will be the main theme of the first ever World Press Institute conference in Bulgaria. Titled “New Horizons in Journalism,” the event will be held in Sofia on September 24–25 in cooperation with the Association of European Journalists – Bulgaria and the America for Bulgaria Foundation.