One additional award was presented to Hollywood director and producer of Bulgarian origin Ted Kotcheff for his contribution to the Bulgarian community on behalf of the Consul General of Bulgaria in Los Angeles, Boyko Hristov.

The ceremony was attended by two other distinguished Bulgarians in the USA - actors Maria Bakalova and Dimitar Marinov.

"We are proud to have received the assistance of the Consulate General of Bulgaria in Los Angeles for the organization of the event," said Elka Ruskov, Vice President of the Bulgarian Foundation for Art, Culture and Education, in an interview with Radio Bulgaria.

For 30 years I have been committed to the cause of Bulgaria abroad and I can say that for the first time we have such a good cooperation between the community and our Consulate General in the person of Mr. Boyko Hristov."

Apart from her involvement with the Foundation, Elka Ruskov has been the Honorary Consul of Bulgaria in Washington State for just over two weeks.

" I have been living in the USA for 30 years now," she says. My husband, Yordan Ruskov, and I moved there as IT engineers. He was the first Bulgarian to work for Microsoft and I was the fifth. Later, I founded an arts and culture NGO in Seattle.

It seems that because of my many years of work to promote Bulgaria abroad, I have been selected as Honorary Consul in Washington State. This will give us more chances to expand our contacts with the local administration and to further deepen our relations with the US in the fields of trade, investment, tourism, information technology, education and culture. We will have greater opportunities to organize many more patriotic initiatives within the Bulgarian community and beyond. We are looking for projects that will build bridges between Bulgarians and Americans or other communities so that our work will be meaningful to the entire diaspora on the West Bank."

The awards were given to Bulgarians, for whom Bulgaria is not only a homeland, but also a cause.These are: The Ensemble for Bulgarian Folk Dance XoroTroptzi, Los Angeles; Daniela Ivanova-Nyberg, arts program director at the Bulgarian Cultural and Heritage Center of Seattle, Washington; Zhivka Kostova, founder and director of the Bulgarian School "St. Cyril and Methodius'' in Los Angeles and founder of the Bulgarian-American Cultural Educational Foundation; Tenio Popmintchev, professor at the Physics Department and Center for Advanced Nanoscience with the University of California, San Diego.

The special award was given to Father Bratso Krsic from the Serbian Orthodox Church "St. George" in San Diego for his dedication, humanity and support for the Bulgarian Church "St. Nicholas the Wonderworker" and the Bulgarian community in the city.

The bronze statuette, which our compatriots received, is an exquisite work of art by sculptor Bronislav Likomanov. It is a miniature copy of the Cyrillic monument in Los Angeles, built on the initiative and with the support of the Bulgarians in this part of the USA. In addition to this activity, our community hopes to fulfill another dream - to hold a festival of Bulgarian cinema in Los Angeles. This is another priority we are actively working on.

• Lawyer Ognyan Gavrilov with a new mission – to unite the Bulgarian community in California and the surrounding US states