READ announces this Call for Applications to provide support to CSOs to strengthen multilingual capacities of CSOs to better advocate reconciliation, intercultural literacy and tolerance through the first Sub-Grant Scheme Cycle LOT1: Support of multilingual projects awarding 12-15 small grants to CSOs from Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey (the target is approximately 2-3 sub-grants per country) with amount up to EUR 2.000 per sub-grant.

The Open Call 1 Support of multilingual projects in five countries aims to support the regional diffusion of work from target countries. The purpose of this effort is expected to be for translation, in combination with presentation and promotion of regional literature. The support from this project will supplement and significantly scale-up the interregional translation of authors from Western Balkan and Turkey.

Objectives

The key objective of the multilingual projects is to support regional diffusion of works from the targeted countries. To this end, the bulk of the effort under the multilingual projects is expected to be for translation, in combination with presentation and promotion of regional literature. The key need that has been identified by this project is that the authors from target countries remain unrecognized in the region because their work is not translated. READ will provide support to CSOs to perform initiatives within their native countries, by awarding small grants that will contribute to achieve the following overall objectives:

• Promoting intercultural literacy and democratic values through reading culture and exposure to interregional literary works
• Fostering regional cooperation between civil society actors to promote reconciliation and normalization
• Supporting cultural and linguistic diversity in the Western Balkan, Turkey and beyond
• Strengthening the transnational circulation and diversity of Western Balkan and Turkish literary works in the long term
• Improving access to Western Balkan and Turkish literary works regionally and beyond and reach new audiences.

Priorities

• Encouraging translations from local authors among Western Balkan countries and Turkey into the different local languages from the targeted countries
• Encouraging translations of less represented genres such as works for young public (children, adolescents and young adults), comics/graphic novels, short stories or poetry
• Encouraging the appropriate use of digital technologies in both the distribution and promotion of the works
• Increasing the visibility of authors (In this regard, it will be required to include a biography of the author in each translated book)

Funding Information

• The available sub-grant budget is EUR 80.000 in total for three rounds in three years.
• For the first round available budget is EUR 28.000. Maximum sub-grant amount per applicant is EUR 2.000.
• Projects may not be implemented longer than 9 months.

Eligibility of Activities

The following is the list of activities, but not limited to, that will be considered as eligible for this Call for Applications:

• Translation, publication, distribution and promotion of a regional literature;
• Projects should have a regional dimension
• They should consist in the translation, publication, distribution and promotion of the books as a package, based on a sound and defined editorial strategy.

Eligibility of Applicants

The applicants need to be:

• non-profit making; o civil society organizations;
• directly responsible for the preparation and management of the project with co-applicant(s);
• registered in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia or Turkey for at least 6 months before the date of publication of the call (23rd of December, 2020);
• working on one or more of the thematic areas of relevance of this Call for Proposals

For more information, visit READ.