https://svitac.org

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

Local volunteers: Eldar Bešić, Amna Balija, Aida Slomić

‘Weltwärts’ volunteers: Charlotte Stella Kramer, Lenja Helen Schulze Wessel

‘ESC’ volunteers: Maika Luise Dils, Marlen Eckert, Ian Abraham Wade, James Richard Williams 

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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 (4-14)
  • Standard and Conversational Language workshops – English, German
    • I love English – English workshops for 15-30
    • “Lasstuns Deutsch sprechen!/Pričajmo njemački!“ (Let’s speak German) – German workshops for 15-30
  • Music workshops – samba, guitar for 15-30

  HIGHLIGHTS ON MONTH’S ACTIVITIES

  • This month with the help of our local and international volunteers, our participants achieved a lot. With a little practice from the Music session Maika, one of our international volunteers, put on quite the performance. The participants, who sang with her as she played guitar, were all engaged and couldn’t wait until the next session. Our new international volunteer from the UK, James, assisted in English lessons focusing on Greek mythology for students 10+. We additionally invited students 16+ for German lessons with our volunteer native speakers. Bringing native speakers and enhancing the level of teaching within our centre is just one of the benefits of our organization. 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 in Bosnia’s) activities in February. 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 talked about rain, wind, clouds, rainbows, trees, spring and weather. The participants enjoyed drawing and making clouds and rainbows, small turtles, and robots from different materials and were happy to take them home. They continued with the alphabet and learned to write the letters E, F, G, H, I, and J. They did warm-up exercises and yoga for children, and every Thursday they danced and practiced listening to a story. Some of the stories they read this month were: The Ugly duckling, Red riding hood, Hansel and Gretel, Pinocchio, and Cinderella. In the English, German, and Turkish language workshops they learned words related to farm animals, the house, and sports. All workshops are implemented with an educational visual method with pictures and video; the goal of informal educational workshops is to develop creativity, memory, motor skills, empathy, socialization, and tolerance for diversities. The highlight with the younger group was the workshop for International Mother Language Day when they created a poster showcasing different greetings from around the world by using countries’ national animals which allowed them to create positive associations between a country and its local language.
    • Older group –  They discussed the following topics: the British education system, social justice, mine awareness, and how to be more socially aware online. 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 learned the modal verbs (know, must, wish), repeated vocabulary of new words and verbs in the present tense, wrote dictations, read and translated short texts, worked on practicing everyday communication and grammar, and got help with homework and school projects. The highlight with the older group was the workshop for World Day of Social Justice when they talked about how much young people are aware of social injustice and possible solutions on the state level, but also on the individual level.

ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

• In February, Svitac (Firefly in Bosnia) very much appreciated the collaboration with 6 Weltwärts and ESC volunteers from Germany and the UK.
• Visa process has been started for one volunteer from the UK.
• Sending ESC and ‘Weltwärts’ – Four volunteers from Bosnia are doing their service in Germany and Turkey (2-12 months).

MEETINGS and PRESENTATIONS

• Svitac’s (Firefly in 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 in Bosnia’s) representatives attended the “Info session for young people” organized by the Youth Council of the Brčko District of BiH as part of the “Youth Advocacy Platform” project. The main goal was to inform young people from Brčko District about their rights, the Law on Youth, the Strategy for Youth, and other important initiatives whose advocates tomorrow would be precisely them.