Svitac (Firefly in Bosnia) Project Report – January 2023

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

Local volunteers: Maja Tomić, Eldar Bešić, Jelena Tošić, Amna Balija, Aida Slomić

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

‘ESC’ volunteers: Maika Luise Dils, Marlen Eckert 

      

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 was an educative, creative, but also festive month. However, after a few non-working days, the activities continued with the same intensity. Given that the school holidays lasted until half of the month, the participants had more time for free activities organized in the youth centre. The team was enjoying working together and planning different activities. 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 in Bosnia’s) activities in January. 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 trees, fruits, leaves, small ships, boats, turtles, hedgehogs, chameleons, and dragons/lizards, so they drew and made them from various materials. From flour, water, and salt, they made modelling clay, and then made various figures and animals. The group continued to learn and write numbers 15 and 16 and did a very successful small test. They continued with the alphabet, repeated writing the letter A, and learned to write the letters B, C, Č, Ć, and D. They did warm-up exercises and yoga for children, and every Thursday they danced and practiced listening to a story. In the English, German, and Turkish language workshops they learned words related to greetings, numbers, and months. 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 where they made dragons, played with them, and gave them very interesting names.
      • Older group –  They discussed the following topics: New Year’s resolutions, travel, school and the school system, the Internet, and its meaning in various segments of 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 repeated the 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 International Education Day when they talked about education nowadays and how ways of learning changed in general in the last couple of years.

ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

  • In January, Svitac (Firefly in Bosnia) very much appreciated the collaboration with 4 Weltwärts and ESC volunteers from Germany.
  • 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) staff attended 5 days Contact Making Seminar in North Macedonia organised by the Richter foundation from The Netherlands, Sfera International from North Macedonia, and Two+Two from Italy. The main objectives of the seminar were to explore and discover youth work and policy in North Macedonia, to further develop the partnership between organizations from the EU and Balkan, to increase the skills of the participants on Erasmus+ participation, to enable a friendly environment for future ESC in Europe, to have a good working knowledge of the Erasmus+ program, to develop new projects together, to explore the aims and objectives of the Erasmus plus program, and to place it in the context of nowadays. The project brought together 24 organizations that are active within the Erasmus+, accredited to host/send ESC volunteers, and/or who are willing to work with ESC in the nearby future.
Categories:

Activities, news, Project Report