On the occasion of February 21 – International Mother Language Day, the Ministry for Inter-Community Relations, in cooperation with the Directorate for the Development and Advancement of Education in the Languages of Community Members and the Directorate for Promoting and Advancing the Culture of Community Members, organized an event attended by the award recipients from the announced call for submitting works (poetry-prose) written in the students’ mother tongue.

All students from sixth to ninth grade had the right to participate in the call, and one of the conditions for participation was that the works had to be written in the student’s mother tongue (Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish, Romani, Serbian, Bosnian, Vlach, and/or other languages), regardless of whether the language is represented in the regular school curriculum. The themes of the works were freely chosen by the student, with the condition that they should not contain discriminatory elements against members of other communities, their language, or religion.

The most successful students and their mentors received acknowledgments and appropriate gifts.

“Today, the world marks International Mother Language Day – February 21, established by the United Nations and UNESCO in 1999, aimed at promoting, nurturing, and affirming all languages spoken by the existing communities around the world, as well as supporting the implementation of strategies and policies in favor of linguistic diversity across the globe, which is also our goal and task. We must build a society that respects the right to speak and learn the mother tongue of all communities, while also working on creating policies for equality, preventing any attempts at discrimination, strengthening cultural particularities, and promoting coexistence in our country, which is characterized as multinational and multilingual,” emphasized the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Inter-Community Relations, Ivan Stoilkovic.