https://svitac.org

Staff: Gordana Varcaković, Dina Vošanović, Miloš Popić, Sanjin Vošanović

Local volunteers: Adin Midžić, Merima Hidanović, Ines Močević, Zorana Nemček, Almira Čehić

‘Weltwearts’ volunteers: Lydia Luise Jung, Lana Fuchs

‘EVS/ESC’ volunteers: Hannah Luise Ursula Külper                

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ON-GOING PROGRAMME

• Culture and Art Diversity around the World – Includes Language, Art&Crafts, Music, Drama, and Sports workshops from Monday to Friday
  • Standard and Conversational Language workshops – English, German
    • I love English – English workshops for children, teenagers and young people
    • “Lasstuns Deutsch sprechen!/Pričajmo njemački!“ (“Let’s speak German”) – German workshops for children, teenagers and young people
  • Art&Crafts workshops – practical arts and crafts workshops for children and teenagers
  • Music workshops – samba, guitar for children and young people

  HIGHLIGHTS ON MONTH’S ACTIVITIES

  • This month was a month of quarantine, and as such, filled with restrictive measures, the anticipation of the news of the progress of the fight against the Coronavirus, filled with stress and fear for the future, and finally an increasing impatience to return to normal life. Despite the difficult situation, care for loved ones and great psychological pressure, with the great help of our local and international volunteers, we were able to develop and continue our online activities and thus support and connect our participants and their parents in these difficult time. International volunteers have been doing a lot of different daily activities and they focused on different things (e.g. supporting online activities, promotion of the organization through social media).
  • About 137 participants regularly attended Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) online activities in April. Participants were aged between 4 and 40 years old. The youngest and the oldest participants attended Culture and Art Diversity around the World workshops and English/German workshops for adults.
    • Younger group – They made paper hedgehogs, dogs, butterflies and flowers, cardboard elephants, various forms of plain dough, which were then coloured with water crayons. The participants wrote numbers 1-10 and drew basic shapes from geometry. They continued to learn Latin letters L, M, N, NJ and the words that begin with these letters in local languages (Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian), maths and new words in English and German related to fruit, vegetables, spring and tolerance. The group read stories about friendship, a rainy day and spring in the park. In the Music Workshops, they worked in the computer program Music Lab, which is intended for their age and creative development of musicality. As part of our regular activities, this month we again paid attention to hygiene, where we emphasized the importance of maintaining hygiene with age-appropriate methods, and reiterated how often and how properly to wash hands and teeth. Highlight with the younger group was the online workshop for Planet Earth Day when they read the song “Little Earth Guardians” and drew a planet green and clean.
    • Older group – They discussed their hobbies/collections, literature and what they were currently reading. With the help of ‘GIFs’, they expressed their feelings towards the current situation. This month we launched a mini-online project, in which each participant says (in the language they choose) sentence “Freedom is expensive”. In this way, we wanted to draw attention that we are not aware of how much our freedom means to us and that we often forget the little things that make our lives more beautiful and complete. The participants had a conversation and discussion about the International Day of planet Earth with the goal of raising ecological awareness. The highlight with the older group was the discussion of what would be the first thing they will do with their friends after isolation.

  EVS/ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

  • In April, Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) very much appreciated online collaboration with 3 international volunteers: two ‘Weltwärts’ volunteers from Germany and one EVS/ESC volunteer from Germany.
  • Sending EVS/ESC and ‘Weltwärts’ – One volunteer from Bosnia is doing his EVS/ESC and service in Slovenia (9 months).

  MEETINGS and PRESENTATIONS

  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) staff attended European Solidarity Corps Online Course “Ready, Set, Make the change!”. This course allowed people interested in the European Solidarity Corps to learn about the programme opportunities in a flexible way. Learners had an opportunity to interact through discussion forums where questions and good practice ideas were shared. This course focused on 7 main objectives: learning the essentials of the European Solidarity Corps, discovering the format and practice of Volunteering projects, discovering the essence of the Solidarity project and the main steps to start it, exploring opportunities of Traineeships and Jobs, understanding ways to support young people within different types of projects, exploring how to prepare to apply for a European Solidarity Corps project as an organisation or a group of young people and discovering how to apply for a European Solidarity Corps Quality Label.
  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) staff attended the online course “Facing Pandemic: Grassroots NGO & CBO Resilience” for grassroots organization leaders working to protect their communities, stay afloat, remain visible, and exchange ideas in this uncertain moment. The free online platform has been built to help people to learn about this pandemic, to learn how to protect themselves and their community, to learn strategies for resilience, and connect with peers around the world. This course is created by Omprakash, a U.S.-based non-profit dedicated to “facilitating relationships, dialogue, and learning between social change agents around the world.” Omprakash runs an online learning platform called EdGE (Education through Global Engagement). Typically EdGE is only accessible to a network of Omprakash Partner organizations and volunteers, but this space is open to all who would benefit from a kindred community at this moment.
    You can check their latest blog here: https://www.omprakash.org/blog/embodying-resilience
  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) representatives attended webinar about Omprakash’s online volunteers. This webinar was participated by 17 organisation from 4 Continents. They talked about how COVID-19 has changed our community, youth work and daily life, what is the reality for organisations now, what is most fearful and what do we hope. Omprakash’s partners presented news in organisations’ platform and opportunities for online volunteers. They offered positions and strategy for work with them.
  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) representatives attended the webinar “How to build uncertainty into your strategy”. The main goals for this webinar were to get information and guidance on how to account for disruption when you are planning your strategy in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. This session featured experts from the development of consultancy firm MzN International.
  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) staff participated online meeting of the Promote Positive network when members discussed current situations and future plans. This network is supported by the OSCE Mission in BiH.