https://svitac.org

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

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

‘Weltwearts’ volunteer:  Alexander Likic

EVS volunteers: Monica Reeves, Eleonore Pearson, Benjamin Owens, Mahmut Taha Bicer, Yunus Seckin                                             

Self-fundraising volunteers:  Bonnie Sturgess, Eduardo Patricio Altube

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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 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
• Local language lessons for international volunteers

HIGHLIGHTS ON MONTH’S ACTIVITIES

• This month was rather quiet and relaxed due to the cold weather, snow and large number of holidays. Children had their school winter break extended for one more week because of bad weather conditions and illness. However despite this we have still ran some lovely workshops with the children and young people. International volunteers have been doing a lot of different daily activities and they focused on different things (fundraising, promotion of the organization through social media, organising artwork for the Southampton exhibition etc.).
• About 95 participants regularly attended Svitac’s activities in January, 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 different shapes of snowflakes, snowmen and snow animals. They also learned a lot of new words in English related to winter and winter animals (snow, snowflakes, Christmas tree, presents, polar bear, reindeer, penguin, etc.). Highlights with the younger group were two presentations: Scottish day (Burns Night) and Australian day prepared by our international volunteers Monica and Bonnie.
  • Older group – They made snowman out of paper and cotton wool, animals out of cups (rabbit, reindeer, chicken, mice, and dinosaurs). They also did finger tips portrait card, silhouette portrait and abstract expressionism (making their own abstract pictures). In the Language Workshops, the group did ‘New Year’s resolutions’, learned about tartan design and countries’ flags (Australia and Scotland) and did a workshop on Robert Burns (talked about him and his work, reading different poems he wrote). In the Music Workshops the group learned new songs in English and local language. Some songs were related to traffic signs, some to winter and holidays. They also learned traditional Scottish dance.

EVS, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

• In January, Svitac very much appreciated collaborating with 8 international volunteers: one ‘Weltwearts’ volunteer from Germany, five EVS volunteers from the UK and Turkey and two self-funded volunteers from Australia and Argentina.
• Sending EVS – Two volunteers from Bosnia doing their EVS service in Cyprus (9 months) and Lithuania (12 months).
• Visa process has been finished for 2 international volunteers from Turkey and started for one self-funded volunteer from Australia (arrived in January).

MEETINGS and PRESENTATIONS

• Svitac 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 January and discuss activities scheduled to take place in the youth centre.
• Svitac local volunteers attended seminar “Be cool make a standard” organized by NGO ‘Kult’ Tuzla in the Youth centre. The topics of the seminar were: self-esteem, non-violent communication, healthy life style and addiction.
• Gordana and Dina attended weltwarts selection seminar from 25th to 30th January in Halle, Germany. They were part of trainers’ team as the representatives of weltwarts partner organisations from the Balkans.