https://svitac.org

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

Local volunteers: Adin Midžić, Merima Hidanović, Zorana Nemček

‘EVS/ESC’ volunteers: Reyhan Ebrar OÇAKTAN, Kanan AGHASIYEV                

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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 started with bad news: the hosting weltwärts volunteer program has been cancelled for this year. On the other hand, the arrival of new volunteers from Turkey has brought little hope that at least ESC volunteer projects will be able to continue. 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 142 participants regularly attended Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) activities in October. 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 houses of colourful wooden sticks, the solar system and paper planets, and various decorations for Halloween. The group watched video projections of stories, fairy tales, and cartoons with messages about friendship: Pinocchio, Sponge Bob, and Tom and Jerry. They learned Cyrillic letters И, Ј, Л, Љ, Г (I, J, L, Lj, G) and the words that begin with these letters in local languages (Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian), maths and new words in English and German related to numbers, time, garden, living room, Halloween and tolerance. In the Music Workshops, they learned and rehearsed the songs “Duck School”, a Turkish lullaby and recorded a video with the song “Valley of the Mummies”. All the songs were very demanding and consisted of several verses. 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 a puppet show when they were able to show their acting skills.
    • Older group –  They discussed the following topics: what high school education offers us, how emotions affect sober decision-making, healthy eating and which social networks are used to achieve goals (school and leisure). In the Language Workshops, the group worked on grammar and more complex sentences 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 the graffiti workshop for The International Day of Nonviolence when they watched a video about current battlefields in the world and wrote peace messages with sprays.

ANNUAL EVENTS

• Halloween 2020 – Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) organised Halloween on 29th October. Due to restrictions, a limited number of participants and to comply with all COVID-19 epidemiological measures the event took place during the day in several groups. The participants had an opportunity to come in costumes, to participate in various games, face painting, fun activities and enjoy the snacks and refreshment. Children, who did not have costumes, had an opportunity to have fun with face painting done by international volunteers. The Halloween Party was attended by 60 participants.

EVS/ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

• In October, Svitac (Firefly Bosnia) very much appreciated collaboration with 2 EVS/ESC volunteers from Turkey.
• Sending EVS/ESC and ‘Weltwärts’ – One volunteer from Bosnia is doing his EVS/ESC service in Slovenia (9 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) staff participated in an online meeting with Western Balkans organizations accredited within ESC: ‘Move towards Solidarity in the projects’ organised by SALTO SEE Slovenia. During the meeting following issues were addressed: How can we function (work and live) within the changing environment (with volunteers, with our usual target groups)? How can we address solidarity in this situation? How to transform activities into the online world? Can we do it? Does it make sense? Does it contribute to the benefits of the local community? Is it interesting and stimulating for volunteers? The balance between offline and online – how to find it?
• Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) staff participated in the 3rd European Youth Work Convention which was moved into the digital space due to current developments around the coronavirus pandemic. The event was hosted by German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens and Women and Youth. JUGEND für Europa, the National Agency for the EU programmes Erasmus+ Youth in Action and European Solidarity Corps, was its partner in organising and developing the content of the event. The Convention provided a central platform for discussing the latest developments in youth work practice and youth policy. Its general objectives were to link youth work practice and youth policy, to enhance the visibility of youth work and its value, to facilitate discussions on specific topics, to acquire new insights and transfer knowledge and promote common ground and joint action within the community of practice.
• Svitac’s (Firefly Bosnia’s) staff participated in an online course ‘The PBA (partnership-building activity) Solidarity in the Balkans’ organized by Greek NA. The main objective of the activity was to support networking and partnership building under European Solidarity Corps between organizations from the Western Balkans and Programme countries.