The latest data from the international PISA study show that adolescents in Bulgaria do not know how to read for meaning, understand and analyze an average long text. The lack of these skills leads to misinformation, it challenges democratic principles and increases the impossibility of professional development. The National Reading Pact identifies the main issues related to functional illiteracy and outlines an action plan outlining all the important steps to achieve change. The pact laid the foundations of a strong reading alliance that brings together citizens, trade unions, representatives of non-profit organizations and politicians. One of the first steps was The National Day of Reading in Bulgaria, the first edition of which united nearly 180,000 Bulgarians in the country and abroad.

The benefits are aimed at the entire Bulgarian society. The campaign aims to attract more like-minded people from society, business, non-governmental organizations, local and national authorities to work together on The National reading plan. The cause is promoted through the traditional and social media channels of our partner network of associations, non-governmental organizations and opinion leaders whose main activity and interests are focused on reading and books.

Since founded our mission has been to empower citizens to rethink the importance of reading and access to books, to think critically, to compare, analyze and discover credible information and to make objective decisions without succumbing to manipulations and misinformation. The strategies laid down in the National Reading Pact expand our activities and include citizens, like-minded people from the cultural and business sectors and politicians.

National Day of Reading, November 17, 2023 The results of the campaign are record-breaking - in just one week, 177,609 people registered as readers and listeners (of which nearly 300 librarians, over 2,000 teachers and their students, over 350 kindergartens and about 1,000 schools, including Sunday schools abroad). The campaign received support from the Ministry of Culture in the person of Deputy Minister Amelia Gesheva, and the Ministry of Education and Science and the Regional Administration of Education helped the information about The Day of Reading to reach more educational institutions Round Table "Reading is Literacy", December 7, 2023 The round table brought together representatives of state institutions and non-governmental organizations, presidents of associations, reading specialists and journalists who exchanged ideas and proposals related to the alarming statistics on functional illiteracy. All those present, including Yana Genova, Deputy Mayor of Sofia for Culture, Education, Sports and Youth Activities and Neda Kristanova, Director of the Center for Assessment of Pre-school and School Education supported the idea for the alliance National Reading Pact

National Day of Reading established the tradition of celebrating reading every year because it is the basis of a developing civil society. Young readers and their parents set aside time to read, schools became an environment for reading and literary meetings, children and teenagers got involved, which proved that initiatives outside the compulsory educational plan also arouse the interest of young people. Representatives of local and national authorities and non-governmental organizations, trade unions and specialists joined the National Reading Pact and continue to do so, working together to build a reading infrastructure and to implement the steps set out in The National reading plan.