https://svitac.org

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

Local volunteers: Adin Midžić, Zorana Nemček

‘EVS/ESC’ volunteers: Angela Claire Stoddard, Malcolm Thomas Lowe, Ismail Abur, Mahmut Toprak                

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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 additional restrictions were introduced so online work with participants dominated in the second half of the month. Although the whole month was quite ‘dark’ and depressing, a glimmer of optimism was brought about by the arrival of new international volunteers at the end of the month. 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 November. 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 a zebra with their hands, a mosaic of paper and decorative motifs of flowers. The group watched video projections of songs, stories, fairy tales and cartoons with messages about friendship (The bus told me, Good and greedy, Pink Panther in the fight against evil). They learned Cyrillic letters Г, М, Х, О (G, M, H, O) and the words that begin with these letters in local languages (Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian), maths and new words in English and German related to adjectives/opposites, insects and animals, hide-and-seek games and various types of plants, flowers and tolerance. In the Music Workshops, they learned and rehearsed songs: ‘Djeca su ukras svijeta’ (Children are the decoration of the world), ‘Miš je dobio grip’ (The mouse got the flu), ‘Nije lako bubamarcu’ (It’s not easy for a ladybug) and various musical rhythms. 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 the workshop for International Day of Tolerance when they watched an animated video “My friend Isabel” and learned how important tolerance is to respect diversity.
    • Older group –  They discussed the following topics: how important it is to vote in elections, advantages and disadvantages of online teaching and reality shows. In the Language Workshops, the group worked on grammar and more complex sentences with the use of suggestions for movement, searching for objects through four Cases, and continued to practice verbs in the past tense and sentence construction. Besides, they practised daily communication and worked on projects and presentations for the school. The highlight with the older group was discussion about the term ‘tolerance’ and what it means personally to them.

ANNUAL EVENTS

• Anti-fascism Day 2020 – Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) was again a part of 9th of November global international campaign. We have marked this day with a group of young people from Brčko district, making the video and talking about the power of poetry. We have seen what unchecked discrimination has been a prelude to, and every year we remind ourselves of all the work that is left to be done. In this way, we are allowing young people to speak loud and advocate the important values of peacebuilding.

EVS/ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

• In November, Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) very much appreciated collaboration with 4 EVS/ESC volunteers from UK and Turkey.
• Visa process has been started for two EVS/ESC volunteers from 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.
• Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) participants attended the online Digital Youth Forum organized by the European Youth Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina in cooperation with the OSCE Mission to BiH and the Coalition for the Fight against Hate from Tuzla and Brcko. The main goal of the forum was to give young people a chance to participate in the parliamentary debate on current topics (youth activism during the pandemic, tolerance and the position of marginalized groups, graffiti – art or vandalism).