https://svitac.org

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

Local volunteers: Adin Midžić, Merima Hidanović, Ines Močević, Mehmed Hidanović, Ahmed Avdić, Semir Brodlić, Dijana Živković

‘Weltwearts’ volunteers: Florian Pauleck

‘EVS/ESC’ volunteers: Dominik Sujka, Nadine Breitenbücher

Omprakash volunteers: Kathleen Kohler                 

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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 Language workshops – English and German
    • English – standard English language workshops for teenagers and young people
    • German – standard German language workshops for teenagers and young people
  • Conversational Language workshops – English, German
    • I love English – conversational English workshops for teenagers and young people
    • “Lasst uns Deutsch sprechen!“ (“Let’s speak German”) – conversational German workshops for teenagers and young people
  • Art&Crafts workshops – practical arts and crafts workshops for children and teenagers
  • Music workshops – samba, guitar, music workshops for children and young people
  • Sports workshops – for teenagers and young people
  • Drama workshops – for teenagers and young people
• Local language lessons for international volunteers

HIGHLIGHTS ON MONTH’S ACTIVITIES

• This month was wonderful and culminated with summer camps in the last week. It was great to see the work that the volunteers and participants completed in a short amount of time. There were many local volunteers that helped with the week. Many of them have grown up as participants in the Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) programs and came back to offer their help and support. There was really great attendance by the parents. They seemed very proud of their children and the work they had completed, new friends they had made and loved the program and activities. International volunteers have also been doing a lot of different daily activities and they focused on different things (fundraising, promotion of the organization through social media etc.).
• About 148 participants regularly attended Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) activities in August. 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 monsters, octopuses, bracelets, the swimmers with the floater, butterflies, they cut out body parts out of paper and glued them together. They learned to write and pronounce letters M and N in local languages, maths and new words in English and German related to the sports and dancing. In the Music Workshops, they were practising songs “Going green song”, “The Crawdad Song” and “Leteći medvjedići” (Flying teddy-bears). The group also had the opportunity to play together on various percussions and acoustic instruments. Highlight with the younger group was a presentation about the United States of America and Seattle (hometown of our volunteer John). The group enjoyed seeing pictures of his big country, mountains, lakes, oceans and the animals of local forests.
  • Older group – They made windmills 3D model, portrait drawings, decoration for summer camps, comic book drawing, origami and soap carving. In the Language Workshops, the group learned new words related to movies, music, books, peace, and tolerance and practised small talk in English, German and Spanish. In the Music Workshops, the group was practising songs for performance during Children’s Day. The participants played a lot of volleyball, basketball and team spirit games. The highlight with the older group was a workshop related to ecology when they learned about renewable energy how to preserve and create it.

ANNUAL EVENTS

• Summer camps 2019 – Three camps took place from 26th to 30th August and Children’s Day on 31st August in the Youth Centre. Summer camps included Creative, Language and Music camps. Workshops were held every day from Monday to Friday and each workshop lasted 2 and a half hours.
  • Creative camp – The theme of the creative camp was “ECOLOGY – ECO CULTURE”. Every day started with a short introduction about daily tasks and participants were asked different questions about ecology and environment awareness and fun facts in general. The participants of different ethnicities had a chance to learn and work in a neutral place and make different interesting art items from recycling materials, but also to learn more about ecology and environment awareness. The final results of the Creative camp’s activities were the exhibition and the quiz about ecology. The coordinator of the creative camp was Edina Vošanović and assistants were local volunteers Diana Osmić, Mlađana Borojević, Majida Hasković, Leo Burkanović, Jovana Lukić and Ivan Boroja.
  • Language camp – Participants of the language camp had the opportunity to attend workshops in English, German, Turkish and Japanese. It was a nice change from everyday routine for everyone and it was very dynamic and motivating for participants. During the workshops, they learned and improved their vocabulary related to ecology and environment (‘Helping the environment’, ‘How green are you?’, ‘Weather in my country’, Earth Day, Animal Day, Green fingers Day). The coordinators of the language camp were Merima Hajdarević and Kristina Varcaković while assistants were local volunteers (Katarina Mirković, Nejra Ibrišimović and Ines Močević) and international volunteers (Dominik Sujka and Nadine Breitenbücher).
  • Music camp – The camp coordinator was Sanjin Vošanović and three international and local volunteers (Adin Midžić, Ahmed Avdić and John Richardson) participated in preparing and leading parts of everyday workshops. Every workshop started with a warm-up, slowly crossing to carefully chosen games of rhythm, measure, dynamics and teamwork (different each day). All of the games increased in difficulty and variety with enough space and time left for volunteers to introduce the game of their choice. As the main theme was the environment, the main goal of the music camp activities was to write a song with the environment as the theme, record the song and add a video which would be presented to the audience during Children’s Day celebration. Participants were engaged in making musical instruments out of groceries packaging that is used and unavoidable in our daily life such as aluminium cans, plastic bottles and bags but also wood, household items, food (rice and beans) and cereal (wheat and corn). Musical instruments made this way were used to work further on a given rhythmical phrase composing a rhythmic foundation for a song that group will be working on together. Mixer, microphone, active soundbox, cables, sound card and laptop were used for creative and recording activities. Participants were able to individually create musical ideas, listen to those ideas in a group and then exchange and rearrange them. While learning how to play different rhythms on various surfaces, participants were engaged in exploring a palette of sound colours (timbre) they are exposed to in everyday life but are not necessarily considered “musical”. Samba instruments (surdo, repenique, tamborims, caixas and agogos) and boomwhackers were used as sources of sound to which participants are not exposed to in everyday life because they are not used in formal musical education in primary and secondary schools.
  • Children’s Day – Children’s Day was held on 31st August in the Youth centre. The program started at 12:00 and parents and friends of the camps’ participants were able to see what they learned in the previous 5 days of the camps. Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) music camp recorded and performed the song „Smeće niko neće“(„Nobody wants garbage“). The Creative camp’s participants have presented the project “Ecology” and had an exhibition of art items with beautiful and useful decorations. There was also a quiz about ecology and recycling. The Language camp performed three songs in English and did posters to present their week. All visitors were able to play various competitive games, to experience face painting and got nice and useful presents for school during Bingo (tombola).

                   Total participants summer camps: 60       

                   Total participants Children’s Day: 150

EVS/ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

• In August, Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) very much appreciated collaborating with 4 international volunteers: one ‘Weltwärts’ volunteer from Germany, two EVS/ESC volunteers from Germany and one Omprakash volunteer from the USA.
• Sending EVS/ESC and ‘Weltwärts’ – Three volunteers from Bosnia are doing their EVS/ESC and ‘Weltwärts’ service in Germany and Bulgaria 1 and 12 months).

MEETINGS and PRESENTATIONS

• Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) representatives continued to attend regular monthly meetings with the youth centre coordinator and the other NGOs based in Brčko. The purpose of the last meeting was to share information about activities and plans for August and discuss activities scheduled to take place in the Youth Centre.
• Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) representatives attended a week-long course “Democracy &Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina” organised by Most Mira in partnership with the EU Studies Centre at the City University of New York. The course was held in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina and its main goal was to explore issues of poverty, environmentalism, nationalism, gender, diaspora, art, community activism, regional organizations, and NGO politics.