https://svitac.org

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

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

‘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 brought a slow easing of measures caused by the dangers of COVID-19. Although activities in the youth centre have not been allowed yet, Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) staff were allowed to return to the centre’s premises. This brought considerable relief in preparing online activities for participants and hope normal activities would resume soon. 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 136 participants regularly attended Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) online activities in May. 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 drew various animals with their hands and fingers, listened to stories and songs about friendship, hardworking bees and the little virus. They continued to learn Latin letters O, P, R and the words that begin with these letters in local languages (Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian), maths and new words in English and German related to greetings, numbers, family, sport and tolerance. In the Music Workshops, they learned the song “Bear and honey” and a song about numbers in English, German, French and B/S/H. Our volunteers, Adin and Zorana filmed a video where they did basic exercises and challenged participants to do better than them. 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 when they read the song “Home” and sent the message about the importance of the family in their lives.
    • Older group –  They learned interesting facts and differences between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the United Kingdom and thus tried to bring together different cultures and customs. The group discussed the topic of music – each participant sent a link to their favourite song, and they created a joint playlist. Once again with the help of GIF, they said how they feel so we did small energizers. This month, the group completed a mini online project, in which each participant said the sentence “Freedom is expensive” in one of the foreign languages. The video is published through our social media. The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development was marked by participants with messages about the countries they would like to travel to and why they are attracted to that particular culture. The highlight with the older group was the discussion for International Family Day when they sent their motivational messages about the importance of family and what it does mean to them.

  EVS/ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

  • In May, 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 Omprakash webinar: „Medium-term and long-term strategies“ whose aim was to help organizations emerge from this crisis in a stronger position financially and/or operationally. Participants were members of partner organisations and they had the opportunity to learn about how to strengthen their organizations in this period.
  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) staff attended Bond webinar “Institutional funding opportunities & strategies during Covid-19”. Participants listened to a presentation from experts about this field. The Consultants from the UK, EU, Germany, UN, Worldbank and USA presented about institutional donors, priorities and strategies, then funding opportunities for NGOs. More than 100 members of the Bond network took part in this webinar.
  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) representatives attended Bond webinar “Managing international travel and emergency repatriation”. On this webinar, speakers talked about information and guidance on how to manage travel, repatriation and duty of care for staff while delivering programmes in-country. Speakers were experts such as representatives of Key Travel team for Europe and Africa. More than 80 participants had the opportunity to ask about safety travel and when to expect normal air travel for passengers. The rules of travel and border opening are changing very quickly, but everyone is hoping for a quick restart of the system.
  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) representatives attended The Global Dialogue webinar “Fundraising during COVID-19”. The main goals of the webinar were facilitating relationship, dialogue and learning between social changes agents around the world. During meeting Omprakash partner informed participants about their support to all partners through presentations, then participants discussed in a few groups about what organisations doing to avoid this pandemic and make their mission suitable.