OCTOBER AT SVITAC – volunteer’s blog
October has been a busy month at Omladinska organizacijja Svitac. We have been preparing and organising our annual big Halloween event which as usual was a huge success and had a very large attendance. Svitac participants in the daily workshops assisted in making Halloween decorations, games, food and costumes in preparation for the event. They also were a huge help setting up on the day of the Halloween party. It was great to see so many young people invested in making Halloween a success as well as Svitac staff and volunteers.
Activities on the night involved the ‘most imaginative costume prize’, lots of games, a lot of mess and a lot of fun! Games included apple bobbing, doughnut on a string, the flour game, mystery boxes, musical chairs and face painting. Young people also got the opportunity to use our Halloween photo booth and upload their photos of the night to social media #svitachalloween. We now are on Instagram (svitacbrcko) and Twitter (svitac_bih) as well as Facebook so please do follow us to see more photos of our party and general Svitac updates.
This years Halloween would not have been the success it was without the help of such a committed number of local volunteers as well as internationals. It was a great team who ensured everything ran smoothly on the night and they deserve a big congratulatory thank you!
October also saw the arrival and departure of the wonderful Haj, who greatly inspired the young people and staff with her Indian cultural awareness day. Haj is from the UK but both her parents are originally from India, so naturally Indian culture is a big part of her life. We had the good fortune to have Haj deliver a workshop about Indian culture. The young people were really interested and asked some really insightful and thoughtful questions. Haj has inspired the rest of Svitac staff to hold more cultural awareness days in November. So watch this space!
Svitac numbers of participants seems more consistent now the 8+ group have settled into their new term at school and we are now getting to see a good amount of regular attendees. The under 7s have a large consistent number of participants; it was great to see the young people give such a confident mini performance to their parents recently. Lots of positive feedback well done under 7s!
Svitac as usual has been thinking both locally and internationally this month so we delivered a human rights awareness day for the young people. We are also looking forward to activities for International day for Tolerance on the 16th of November.
In addition coming up in November we have lots of exciting things planned including Anti-fascism day on the 7th November a number of cultural awareness days and English, Art and German evening classes. Our regular schedule includes Art on Mondays, English on Tuesdays, music on Wednesdays, Sports on Thursdays and German on Fridays with a different theme each week.
We look forward to seeing new participants and volunteers throughout November!
Cat Rolley, Svitac EVS volunteer
