In May 2012 Public Library Radislav Nikcevic, Jagodina became a member of NGO Beyond Access funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Therefore, it got a chance to attend the conference in Washington DC and compete for $ 10,000 award.
At the conference Local Alternatives for Global Development: Rediscovering Libraries, at Arena Stage in Washington DC from 1st-3rd October there were more than 300 librarians from all over the world, governments and local governments representatives from 35 countries and a lot of officials and organizations involved in funding such as IREX, EIFL, IFLA, MAKAIA, CIVIC agenda, W TECHNOLOGY&SOCIAL CHANGE GROUP, Riecken Community Libraries, READ Global and BILL&MELINDA GATES foundation.
Beyond Access invited 20 world library innovators to the conference. The teams were made up of three members-two project participants and a government representative. The aim of the conference was to have financiers,government representatives and librarians in one place and to start a story about the possibilities of library development.
The conference was opened by Deborah Jacobs, director of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Beyond Access members were involved in several sessions. They met leading experts in communication, international funding, new technologies, etc and and discussed issues important to libraries. After that, the teams explained the ideas of their projects to graphic recorders who presented their ideas on posters . The teams had a task to be next to their posters and sell their ideas for $10,000. There were four winners. One for each category:
- Civic participation
- Economic Opportunity
- Community Information & Development
- Public technology & Innovation
Jagodina Public Library was the winner in the category Economic Opportunity and got a chance to continue the realization of the project AgroLib Ja by revitalizing one more village library in the municipality of Jagodina.
The Ambassador of the Republic of Serbia received the team from Jagodina and Jasmina Ninkov, the director of Belgrade City Library , who was awarded by EIFL for the project “Novcici” in Washington. On that occasion the ambassador expressed satisfaction over the success of Serbian librarians in the United States.
