Charter 22 gUG opened officially its first foreign branch in Bulgaria, exactly in the town of Kyustendil, where the founder and CEO of Charter 22 was born. Although she left Bulgaria 13 years ago for political reasons, her hometown and its people remained deep in her heart. With the opening of the Charter 22 branch there, she has been making her own contribution to the innovative, socially just and sustainable development of the ancient, green, beautiful and historic European town of Kyustendil, which has been continuously inhabited for the past 8,000 years, through human rights education, vocational training, mentoring, coaching and promotion of cooperation between people of Bulgaria and Germany.
People in Bulgaria have long felt forgotten by the world and especially by Europe .
However, Bulgaria is one of the oldest states in Europe. On August 9th, 681, the country was mentioned as a state for the first time at the sixth ecumenical council in Constantinople.
Bulgaria is also the only state that has not changed its name in all these centuries.
The Bulgarian language (български език) is one of the oldest documented Slavic languages, as it has existed for about 1,000 years as a written, official, sacral and literary language. The history of Bulgarian literature is also so old. At the beginning of the 10th century, Bulgaria experienced its heyday and had a significant influence on many European peoples at that time with its language and literature.
Bulgaria was also the single country that has saved its Jews. When the Bulgarian government wanted to deport Jewish fellow citizens in March 1943, many Bulgarian intellectuals showed exemplary determination, courage and public solidarity with their Jewish fellow citizens and successfully refused to extradite them from the country. This unique story of the Power of Human Spirit, unfortunately still little-known in Western Europe for different ideological reasons or because of propaganda, is well-told in the excellent volume „The Man Who Stopped Hitler. Dimitar Peshev and the Salvation of the Bulgarian Jews“. Born namely in the town of Kyustendil, an esteemed lawyer and a convinced democrat, Dimitar Peshev, like millions of others, became after a victim of the inhumane totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe, as the „Black Book of Communism“ tells. After the end of communism in the countries of Eastern Europe, however, serious changes occurred in the culture of remembrance. Freed from the ideological canon people’s memory was pluralized and democratized. Eastern Europeans, including Bulgarians freed themselves from their powerlessness and have been trying again and again to live in truth to this day, as Havel taught us wisely.
