Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) Project Report – May 2021

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

Local volunteers: Adin Midžić

‘EVS/ESC’ volunteers: Angela Claire Stoddard, Malcolm Thomas Lowe, Ahmet Başer, Ali Kutluhan Kaya, Havva Nur Parakazan, Ayşe Isceli                

 


 

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 activities were much more normal. The number of infected people decreased, so the participants had the opportunity to work more in the youth centre. Nevertheless, the combination of online and offline workshops continued. Our new volunteers from Turkey have adapted quickly to Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) team; their knowledge and skills helped us create new interesting activities and workshops. It was interesting to learn about their beautiful country and to hear their opinions about the similarities and differences in food and music between Bosnia and Turkey. 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) activities in May. 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 a tree with various leaves, flowers and twigs, a poster with faces of their best friends and farm animals out of cardboard. In the English, German and Turkish language workshops they learned occupation, family, park activities, numbers and tolerance related words. In the Music Workshops, they learned the songs „U svijetu postoji jedno carstvo“(There is one kingdom in the world) and “You/me/he/she”, got introduced with percussion for children and rehearsed rhythmic counting from 1-4. Highlight with the younger group was the International Day of Families workshop when participants exchanged knowledge and feelings about their families and talked about the importance of family.
      • Older group –  They discussed the following topics: tolerance/the importance of preserving peace in the world, hate speech on online platforms/how we can fight it, and family as an important element in our society. 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 (verbs in the past tense) and wrote short essays about pets and environmental protection. Besides, they practised daily communication and worked on projects and presentations for the school. The highlight with the older group was discussing ‘street’ dogs and whether they pose a danger to citizens when participants had the opportunity to share their opinion about various “wild” shelters for dogs open illegally throughout the town and how important pets are for our emotional balance.

ANNUAL EVENTS

  • Tolerance and culture diversity through music, art and foreign languages – Within the project, a series of music, creative and sports workshops were held promoting cultural diversity, values of tolerance and mutual respect. In this way, the creative expression, the international engagement and the collaborative work of the participants in building and maintaining the culture of reconciliation are encouraged, providing children and young people with a space for creative and educational learning in order to strengthen respect for the community to which they belong. The project lasted from 26th April to 14th May 2021 and was held in the Brcko District area, at the Youth Centre premises. The project directly involved 60 children, teenagers and young people from the Brcko District area.

EVS/ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

  • In May, Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) very much appreciated the collaboration with 6 EVS/ESC volunteers from UK and Turkey.
  • Sending EVS/ESC and ‘Weltwärts’ – Thirteen volunteers from Bosnia are doing their service in Germany, Slovenia, Greece, Turkey, Croatia 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 meetings was to discuss conditions and schedules for the continuation of centre activities.
  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) team attended monitoring and evaluation training organized by Scotland’s International Development Alliance. The main aims of the training were to reflect on what impact does each project have in practical terms and where is the right place or right time to get this information.
  • Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) team took part in the research project Art&Peeacebuilding organised by Salim Stokey, a BSc student in International Relations & Organizations at Leiden University (The Hague, Netherlands). They discussed to what extent Strategic Arts-based Initiatives can contribute to Peacebuilding Processes in Post-Conflict Environments intending to understand how arts-based projects are helping peacebuilding processes.
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