There are people who shed light, and make a difference in this world by leading by example. The Bulgarian National Radio asked its listeners to select the individuals who deserve to be called Awakeners of the Decade most. And a prestigious jury selected ten individuals who deserve the title.

“The most important, the only way a society can be elevated is by education,” says Prof. Minko Balkanski, who lives in Paris but was born in Oryahovitsa village near Stara Zagora. And even though the physicist of world renown has lived most of his life outside Bulgaria, the word that has guided him throughout his life - altruism – took him back to the beginning as he sought to help elevate the nation.

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In 1993 he set up the foundation Minu Balkanski in Oryahovitsa, named after his father, and turned everything the family ever owned into classrooms and libraries.

“We need to banish this selfishness from our hearts, even if there is just a little of it left, and replace it with altruism. Altruism is really very important for the development of society,” Prof. Balkanski says.

Another nominee is Georgi Godpodinov. His book Time Shelter is like a time machine giving an illusion of being able to resurrect the past. But memories bring monsters back to life, and, as it turns out, we are still feeding them in our own world. For his Time Shelter Georgi Gospodinov was awarded the prestigious international Booker Prize.  “It should have been a warning, not a manual,” Georgi Gospodinov says about his novel.

In a video made for his nomination for Awakener of the Decade, the message the writer conveys is brief:

“It is not fair not to react – there are so many things. I have done it always because it is a natural thing. People need to resist all the time, and that is what literature teaches us. We need to create islands of resistance so the world can hold on.”

It is a truism: a small gesture can turn a human life around. For six years Lazar Radkov has evoked the empathy of hundreds of thousands, who, by donating the small caps of plastic bottles have helped buy baby incubators and ambulances for small – and bigger – towns and villages:

“What the caps show is that when there are a lot of people doing small things that are meaningful every day, then things happen in a big way,” Lazar Radkov says.

The result – 22 baby incubators for 22 hospitals, 45 pieces of medical equipment for neonatal and maternity wards in 14 medical establishments, a fifth baby ambulance and a second off-road ambulance are also on the way.

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The awakener of the decade will be selected on National Awakeners’ Day, 1 November, and the award ceremony will be broadcast by the Bulgarian National Radio, bTV and partner media outlets. The other nominees for the award are:

Ivo Ivanov – writer and basketball coach who has been living in the US for 30 years. As a writer he tells stories about ordinary people who have found themselves in extraordinary circumstances;

Nikola Rahnev – entrepreneur, the man who set up the Gorata.bg initiative, and who, together with volunteers has planted more than 2 million trees and has given a roof over the heads to dozens of Ukrainians fleeing the war in their country;

Evgenia Peeva-Kirova and Trayan Trayanov – the motor behind the programme Teach for Bulgaria who have inspired young teachers to teach in small towns and villages;

Stephan Komandarev – the film director who had graduated medicine and who inspires the hope that The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner;

Darin Madzharov – entrepreneur and founder of the educational platform Уча.се (I am learning) who uses video lessons to make education comprehensible and fun;

Maxim and Stefan Ivanov – the first Bulgarians to have rowed across the Atlantic Ocean for a good cause. They are the people behind the “Yes! To Life” campaign, and have been fighting to remove the stipulation for explicit consent by potential organ donors;

Alek Alexiev – actor and civil society activist with a mission to save people, who is not afraid to travel to war-torn Ukraine, bringing aid to its people and helping refugees.

Translated and posted by Milena Daynova

Photos: YouTube, BGNES, EPA/BGNES