Svitac (Firefly) Project Report – August 2017

Staff: Gordana Varcakovic, Dina Vosanovic, Milos Popic, Sanjin Vosanovic

Local volunteers: Adin Midzic, Milica Bacanov, Nadia Selimi, Maja Tomic, Ismar Mustafic, Ines Mocevic, Azra Pezerovic, Aida Zahirovic

‘Weltwearts’ volunteer: Alexander Likic

EVS volunteers: Benjamin Owens, Hüseyin Şeref Çalış, Merve Güçlü

Self-fundraising volunteers: David DeRuwe

ON-GOING PROGRAMME

Culture and Art Diversity around the World – includes Language, Art&Crafts, Music, Drama, and Sports workshops from Monday to Friday
- Standard Language workshops – English and German
  - English – standard English language workshops for teenagers and young people
  - German – standard German language workshops for teenagers and young people
- Conversational Language workshops – English, German, Turkish
  - I love English – conversational English workshops for teenagers and young people
  - “Lasst uns Deutsch sprechen!/Pricajmo njemacki!“ (“Let’s speak German”) – conversational German workshops for teenagers and young people
  - Let’s speak Turkish – conversational Turkish workshops for teenagers and young people
- Art&Crafts workshops – practical arts and crafts workshops for children and teenagers
- Music workshops – samba, guitar, music workshops for children and young people
- Sports workshops – for teenagers and young people
- Drama workshops – for teenagers and young people
Local language lessons for international volunteers

HIGHLIGHTS ON MONTH’S ACTIVITIES

This month was very exciting, creative and full of adventures thanks to our great team of local and international volunteers. International volunteers have also been doing a lot of different daily activities and they focused on different things (fundraising, promotion of the organization through social media etc.).
About 148 participants regularly attended Svitac’s (Firefly’s) activities in August, reconfirming their popularity in our small Brcko District community. 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 paper chains, flowers, sparrows, butterflies, paper animals and magnets. They learned some geometrical shapes, to write and pronounce letters F and G in local language, and new words in English and German related to colours, numbers and summer. They learned new ABC song in English and rehearsed songs for Children’s Day (two in English and one in local language). Highlight with the younger group was learning new song in English about friendship.
- Older group – They made paper owls and a lot of decorations for summer camps and Children’s Day. In the Language Workshops, the group learned new words related to colours and numbers, repeated consonants, played memory game, did crosswords in English and German, and repeated basics in Turkish. In the Music Workshops the group rehearsed for Children’s Day and also learned about rhythm and rhythmic music, and repeated some old songs. The highlight with the older group was learning about food, clothing and music typical for German.

ANNUAL EVENTS

FutureShort festival – The 14th film festival was organised on 25th August. This time preparation included not only translation, video editing, video and sound checking, but also building of an improvised video screen as there is no video screen in the cinema hall of the Youth Centre. Materials used for frame were: wood found in the yard, nails and screws. Bed sheet was used as screening surface and rope to set the screen up on a stage. Our EVS volunteer, Ben Owens, developed the idea and was largely involved in building and setting up the screen with local staff and volunteers. The event in Brčko was a part of global FutureShorts film festival spring season. Short films that were screened in the Youth Centre were also screened in 100 cities and 40 countries all over the world. Spring season program included 6 short films and two music videos and event was opened by a group of local musicians. At the end of screening audience could try typical German, British and Turkish food prepared by Svitac (Firefly’s) international volunteers. The audience in Brčko chose Colombian film ‘Madre’ (director: Simon Mesa Soto) as their favourite film. Total participants: 62
Summer camps 2017 – Three camps took place from 21st to 25th August and Children’s Day on 26th August in the Youth Centre. Summer camps included Creative, Language and Music camps. Workshops were held every day from Monday to Friday and each workshop lasted 2 and half hours.
- Creative camp – The theme of the creative camp was “Four Seasons in Bosnia and Herzegovina”. Every day started with short introduction about daily tasks and participants were asked different questions about geographical, historical and culture facts related to Bosnia. During camp they had an opportunity to socialize while making different items for each season and parts with flora and fauna typical for different regions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They also made a large map of Bosnia from recycling material. The coordinator of the creative camp was Edina Vosanovic and assistants were local volunteers Maja Tomic, Aida Zahirovic, Ismar Mustafic, Edna Mulic, Sejla Huskanovic and Azra Drapic.
- Language camp – Participants of the language camp had opportunity to attend workshops in English, Turkish and German. During the workshops they learned and improved their vocabulary related to introductions, greetings, summer, animals and food. They also learned the basics of the Turkish and German language and the main sights and features of the countries where English is used as first language. The coordinator of the language camp was Milica Bacanov and assistants were international volunteers (Ben Owens, Merve Güçlü and Alexander Likic) as well as local volunteers (Kristina Varcakovic, Matea Brkic, Nadia Selimi and Ines Mocevic).
- Music camp – The camp coordinator was Sanjin Vosanovic and five international and local volunteers (Anne Bonitz, Ben Owens, Hüseyin Şeref Çalış, Adin Midzic and Predrag Jovanovic) participated in preparing and leading parts of everyday workshops. Every workshops started with warm up, slowly crossing to carefully chosen games of rhythm, measure, dynamics and team work (different each day) and ended with practicing composition chosen for the performance. All of the games increased in difficulty and variety with enough space and time left for volunteers to introduce game of their choice. On the day of performance, local volunteer Predrag Jovanovic, took over leading duties and was successfully conducting the group through the performance.
- Children’s Day – Children’s Day was held on 26th August in the Youth centre. The program started at 12:00 and parents and friends of the camps’ participants were able to see what they learned in previous 5 days of the camps. Svitac (Firefly’s) music camp performed as well and all visitors were able to see the exhibition of drawings, models and map of Bosnia made by Creative and Language camps as well as to play various competitive games, to experience face painting and got nice and useful presents for school during Bingo (bingo).

Total participants summer camps: 80

Total participants Children’s Day: 150

EVS, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

In August, Svitac (Firefly) very much appreciated collaborating with 5 international volunteers: one ‘Weltwearts’ volunteer from Germany, three EVS volunteers from the UK and Turkey and one self-funded volunteer from USA. We would like to thank Anne Bonitz, Svitac (Firefly’s) former EVS volunteer who came back to help us with camps’ preparation and realisation. THANK YOU ANNE!
Visa process has been finished for two EVS volunteers from Turkey.
Sending EVS – Four volunteers from Bosnia doing their EVS service in Lithuania and the Netherlands (1 and 12 months).

MEETINGS and PRESENTATIONS

Svitac (Firefly) representatives continued to attend regular monthly meetings with the youth centre coordinator and the other NGOs based in Brcko. The purpose of the last meeting was to share information about activities and plans for August and discuss activities scheduled to take place in the youth centre.

Categories:

Activities