Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) Project Report – February 2021

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

Local volunteers: Adin Midžić, Lejla Pešić

‘EVS/ESC’ volunteers: Angela Claire Stoddard, Malcolm Thomas Lowe, Mehmet Furkan Kocaaslan, Kevser Çıldır                

 


 

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 15+
    • Music workshops – samba, guitar for children and young people

    HIGHLIGHTS ON MONTH’S ACTIVITIES

    • This month the weather was changeable so for a moment we had the impression that spring had already arrived. We continued with a combination of offline and online activities, and at the beginning of the month, we have welcomed two amazing volunteers from Turkey, Kevser and Mehmet, who have brought new skills and positive energy. 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 140 participants regularly attended Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) activities in February. Participants were aged between 4 and 30 years old. The youngest and the oldest participants attended Culture and Art Diversity around the World workshops and English/German conversational workshops.
      • Younger group – They made robots that take care of their environment and are environmentally conscious, a mosaic (a butterfly and a macaroni pigeon of various shapes), small and large planes made of coloured wooden sticks, a sheet of oral hygiene and discussed the importance of maintaining personal hygiene in general. The group watched video projections of stories and fairy tales, and cartoons with messages about friendship, empathy and love for family: Futuristic cartoon ‘Lion’, CGI animations for children about the work of internal organs, and listened to children’s stories prepared by our volunteer Mehmet from Turkey. He also showed the participants a few words in sign language. They learned Cyrillic letters Ф, Х, Ц, Ч (F, H, C, Č) and the words that begin with these letters in local languages (Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian), maths and new words in English and German related to future gadgets, technology, sports, transport, diversity among people and different cultures. In the Music Workshops, they learned the songs “Future” (which consists of two stanzas and sends a positive message about the planet Earth), “Yellow House”, “Svitac yellow submarine“ and “Fly, fly ladybug”. They studied the text and prepared for video recording at the end of the month. Highlight with the younger group was the workshop about safely using the internet and being aware of strangers as they played on the computer and video games.
      • Older group –  They discussed the following topics: social justice, solidarity and human rights, and whether they believe that all citizens in BIH enjoy equal social rights. In this way, we want to provide young people with a safe and neutral space, where they can express their opinions and express positive and negative emotions, without fear of condemnation. In the Language Workshops, the group worked on grammar – the conjunction ‘wenn/if’, writing ads for a lost item (practising the use of adjectives with cases), creating dependent sentences with examples, the use of genitives in sentences and combinations with possessive pronouns. Besides, they practised daily communication and worked on projects and presentations for the school. The highlight with the older group was the discussion on the mother tongue and the importance of preserving it.

EVS/ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

  • In February, Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) very much appreciated the collaboration with 4 EVS/ESC volunteers from UK and Turkey.
  • Sending EVS/ESC and ‘Weltwärts’ – Five volunteers from Bosnia are doing their EVS/ESC service in Slovenia, Greece, Turkey and Poland (2 – 12 months).

MEETINGS and PRESENTATIONS

  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) staff 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 discuss conditions and schedules for the continuation of centre activities.
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Activities