The multicultural and multilingual mobile library will travel through the countries of the five partners of READ during a period of three years, with books and other content provided for each by all the partners in the languages of the respective countries, during 2021 is touring through North Macedonia, while this part of the project is carried out by LOJA Center for Balkan Cooperation. A vehicle FIAT Ducato was procured and customized into a modern equipped mobile library unit. It was officially opened in June 2021 in the village Tearce, near Tetovo. Until November 2021, “READ on wheels” visited 28 communities, some of them very hard to reach, 28 schools were involved and 28 events with different sub-activities were organized, in which 794 pupils were reached.
The activities of “READ on wheels” during 2021 include the following:
- discussion with pupils about reading and creative writing;
- presentation of stories and poetry from the local pupils (living in that community);
- storytelling and creative writing workshop;
- visit and discussions with the READ resident authors in North Macedonia (the visual artist Deniz Beser from Turkey and the writer Shqipe Malushi from Kosovo);
- discussions and workshops with more experienced and popular local authors (Bardhyl Zaimi, who writes in Albanian language, and Milena Ilievska, who writes in Macedonian);
- presentation of translated books from the region, whose translation was supported by the READ sub-grant scheme; cooperation with the Sub-grant beneficiaries;
- presentation of the library;
- borrowing books;
- creative workshops for making bookmarks.
