https://svitac.org

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

Local volunteers: Adin Midžić, Dijana Živković

‘EVS/ESC’ volunteers: Angela Claire Stoddard, Malcolm Thomas Lowe                

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

  HIGHLIGHTS ON MONTH’S ACTIVITIES

  • This month has brought a slight easing of epidemiological measures. Our activities at the youth centre have started to normalize, school holidays are over, so children have returned to school, and it has finally snowed. 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 138 participants regularly attended Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) activities in January. 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 reindeers, magical creatures, a magic forest, caterpillars and forest animals’ masks out of cardboard, paper and plasticine. The group watched video projections of stories and fairy tales, and cartoons with messages about friendship, empathy and love for the family: ‘Full House’, ‘Penguins from Madagascar’, ‘Denis the Menace’ and the Russian animated fairy tale – ‘Chebua The bear’. They learned Cyrillic letters Т, Ћ, У (T, Ć, U) and the words that begin with these letters in local languages (Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian), maths and new words in English and German related to body parts, food and food accessories, forest animals and directions (left, right, forward, backward and stop). In the Music Workshops, they learned and recorded the song ‘Medo, e moj medo’. As part of our regular activities, we paid attention to hygiene, where we emphasized the importance of maintaining hygiene with age-appropriate methods. Highlight with the younger group was making scenography for the music video.
    • Older group –  They discussed the following topics: the migrant situation in our country, the railways in BiH (how vital their role is, whether they have travelled with these means of transport), the good events that happened to them in 2020 and what they want in 2021. 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 (Passive in the present) and more complex sentences with the use of verbs and descriptive adjectives. Besides, they practised daily communication and worked on projects and presentations for the school on the topic ‘My winter break’. The highlight with the older group was the discussion on cultural differences in BiH and the UK and volunteering in general (disadvantages and advantages).

EVS/ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

• In January, Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) very much appreciated the collaboration with 2 EVS/ESC volunteers from the UK.
• Visa process has been finished for 2 EVS/ESC volunteers from the UK.
• 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.