https://svitac.org

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

Local volunteers: Mira Božić, Maja Tomić, Ines Moćević, Eldar Bešić, Nikolina Marković

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

‘ESC’ volunteers: Maika Luise Dils, Marlen Eckert 

‘Love Volunteers’ volunteers: Isabell Krüger, Julia Abel

Projectreportoctober2022 (10)

Projectreportoctober2022 (9)

Projectreportoctober2022 (8)

Projectreportoctober2022 (7)

Projectreportoctober2022 (6)

Projectreportoctober2022 (5)

Projectreportoctober2022 (4)

Projectreportoctober2022 (3)

Projectreportoctober2022 (2)

Projectreportoctober2022 (1)

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 busy and full of various activities. Our international volunteers from Germany, Lotte, Maika, Lenja and Marlen, prepared an interesting communication workshop for students in the third and fourth grades of the high school of economics. The project “Youth for a better future II” has been implemented in Foča, Travnik and Brčko District BiH giving young people the opportunity to be informed about how to develop their skills abroad through different volunteering programs. On October 9th, our ex-volunteer Roderick Hamilton run his first half marathon (the Manchester Half Marathon) fundraising for Svitac (Firefly in Bosnia). He raised $605 for Svitac’s (Firefly in Bosnia’s) future activities. We would like to thank him for all his support of our work! 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 October. 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 swamp and forest animals, coloured and made them from cardboard rolls. The participants celebrated World Values Day with a workshop on trust when they made a tree of kindness and painted the leaves with autumn colours on which they wrote key words: love, trust, togetherness, and respect. The group continued to learn the Cyrillic alphabet practicing writing the letters Ф, Х, Ц, Ч, Ш (F, H, C, Č, Š) and continued practicing reading short words and recognizing letters. In the English, German, and Turkish language workshops they learned words related to numbers, school, and Halloween. In the music workshops, they started learning new dance choreography and a song about hygiene. Sports team activities, warm-up exercises, and yoga for children were held in the park. 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. Highlight with the younger group were the workshops for Halloween week when they learned interesting facts about bats and little ghosts, got creative in painting famous Halloween objects such as little monsters or pumpkins, and proudly presented their self-designed Halloween masks.
    • Older group –  They discussed the following topics: violence in our society, basic human rights, sport and politics, disadvantages and advantages of living in the city/countryside, and favourite books. 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 verbs in the present tense, learned nouns for school things/subjects, wrote dictations, read and translated short texts and phrases, 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 the International Day of Non-Violence when they watched the video about how to fight peer violence in schools and how to develop empathy.

ESC, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

• In October, Svitac (Firefly in Bosnia) very much appreciated the collaboration with 6 Weltwärts, ‘Love Volunteers’, and ESC volunteers from Germany.
• The Visa process has been started for one volunteer from Germany.
• Sending ESC and ‘Weltwärts’ – Five volunteers from Bosnia are doing their service in Germany, Spain, 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 participated in a 5 days study trip in the southern part of Italy. This was the first part of the project ”Exploring European Volunteering” led by an international team of experienced trainers. The activities were organised for organizations that are accredited for Hosting/Sending ESC volunteers and/or who are willing to work with ESC in the nearby future. The project brought together 35 youth work professionals to work together to explore the concept of European citizenship and ESC as a practice at the local and European levels, for young people from all types of backgrounds. The main aims of the project were to learn from the best practices of Italian organizations that are active in sending and hosting ESC, to explore and discover youth work and policy in Italy, to further develop the partnership between organizations from the EU and Balkan, to increase the skills of the participants in improving ESC participation, to enable friendly environment for future ESC in Europe, to make a concrete sustainable action plan for sending and hosting ESC after this project among the partners, to have a good working knowledge of the ESC, to develop new projects together, to explore the aims and objectives of the Erasmus plus program, and to place it in the context of ESC.
• Svitac’s (Firefly in Bosnia’s) staff participated in Residential Annual meeting of ESC organizations active in the European Solidarity Corps Programme (ESC) in the Western Balkans (WB) which took place in Niš, Serbia and was organized by SALTO Slovenia. The meeting aimed to meet the other colleagues and exchange relevant news, to encourage organisations to offer help and seek support for current challenges and/or dilemmas, to empower organisations for active engagement in the realisation of all ESC priorities in their work, to continuously build a supportive community of ESC organisations in the WB and to foster national networking and quality exchange within ESC.