In an article about successful women leaders in Serbia in a magazine Blic Zena, the director of the
Jagodina Library says that being a director does not just involve purchasing
books and moaning about not having enough money to buy some more. Vesna is a
director who introduced computers and the Internet in village libraries and ICT
training for more than 200 farmers.
"When I became a director eight years ago, village
libraries in our municipality were in very poor condition. Even people, who
worked there, did not get their salaries."
She decided that it was a time for changes
and figured out how to do it.
“”The local government could not help us
with starting the project, but I heard about EIFL and their call for innovative
projects proposals and I knew that the right thing was to apply for the $30,000
award. And we won it.
When we started the project and organized
first ICT training, nobody showed up because people were watching an important
football match and simply didn’t want to miss it. That was a defeat for us, but
we didn’t give up.
We managed to bring distinguished
university professors to talk about blueberries, strawberries, cherries…Farmers
who visited the lectures, recommended to each other certain fruit or vegetable
varieties and that is how Rade Damjanovic, agricultural engineer, suggested us
to organize a lecture where he would talk about paulownia.
With the support from Beyond Access, the
project is supposed to be expanded to 17 more libraries in Kragujevac,
Jagodina, Vranje, Aleksinac and Leskovac.
Vesna says that she is proud of Agrolib.rs
and its section online marketplace where farmers can buy and sell. There are
nearly 300 members who regularly sell their produce.
"Working on big projects, such as Agrolib
involves a lot of overtime work, even from home, but I manage to be successful in
it due to my family’s support, "concludes Vesna.
