Open Sofia – One big international family
Not every member is in this picture, but everyone became part of our family!
The “Foreigners in Sofia & Friends” Facebook group was created in 2015. It is now the largest international online community in Bulgaria, connecting more than 27,000 people from around the world.
The Open Sofia Foundation was founded in 2016 to support the community and develop an active network for internationals living in Sofia.
Thanks to a team of passionate and dedicated contributors, opensofia.org was launched in 2020.
Our mission is to create an informational space, full of resources, for the international community in Sofia and Bulgaria.
Open Sofia is a natural evolution of the Foreigners in Sofia & Friends Facebook group. With this website, we hope to answer people’s important questions about the numerous situations they face every day: how to settle here and find a job, what documents to prepare, where to study Bulgarian, what leisure activities to do in English, and many more.
Our team consists of members of the Facebook group. We are the community that asks and answers those questions. Open Sofia is unique because we are an international family helping each other.
Our beloved team members are:
Giuseppe Di Benedetto, Founder
Anastasiia Dehtiarova, Head of Content & Events
Manuel Gajo, Head of Technology & Business Adviser
Agita Jaunzeme, Lead Project Manager
Amélie Leclercq, Legal Adviser
Lindsay Martin, Lead Editor
Lina Jarad, Editor and Writer
Afif Hosseini, UX Adviser
Hamid Reza Darabi, Security & DevOps Adviser
Atanas Yonkov, IT Adviser
Bocho Bochev, QA Adviser
Georgi Hristov, Writer and Photographer
Irina Temnikova, Writer and IT adviser
Clabbe Bjurstrom, Writer and Moderator of Foreigners in Sofia & Friends
Ekaterina Totina, Writer
Sara Coll Lopez, Photographer
Neli Stoylova, Marketing Adviser
Toni P. Lyubenova, Writer
Andrea Vushkova, Writer
Galina Misheva, Writer
Ilias Iatropoulos, Photographer and Event Organizer
Veselin Marinov, Videographer and Photographer
