Svitac Project Report – June 2016

 

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

Local volunteers:  Adin Midzic, Ismar Mustafic, Aida Zahirovic, Anela Kozarevic, Sladjana Basic, Jelena Todorovic, Teodor Pejicic, Katarina Mirkovic

‘Weltwearts’ volunteer:  Jonas Kiesner

EVS volunteers:  Anne Bonitz, Monica Reeves, Vanessa Brumen, Christian Mennell, Eleonore Pearson, Trang Pham

Self-fundraising volunteers:  John Richardson, Marika Olsen

 

About 170 participants regularly attended Svitac’s activities in June, reconfirming their popularity in our small Brcko District community.

 


 
 

ON-GOING ACTIVITIES

  • 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, French, Italian
      • 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 French – conversational French workshops for teenagers and young people
      • Italian for Beginners – conversational Italian workshops for teenagers and young people
    • Art&Crafts workshops – June has been a particularly inspiring month for our artists! Our younger artists produced Minion masks, paper glasses, rubber band bracelets, caterpillars, dinosaurs, mythological creatures; they coloured an outline of Crawdad and danced the Crawdad song that John played for them. The first and the second group made a big poster together – they decorated and wrote “We are Svitac” in English, Cyrillic and Latin alphabet.  The group learned the ‘Banana’ and ‘Rainbow’ songs and used the shakers they made to create a rhythm, enjoying the whole experience very much.
    • Music workshops – samba, guitar, music workshops for children – Monica (international volunteer) started her own intercultural music project. Participants enjoy very much the activities, with an average attendance of 8-10. A few play instruments to provide background music to those singing. In the first week, participants performed a Scottish song, and  learned about its origin and cultural significance in Scotland. In the second week, with the help of John (international volunteer), they performed an American country song about the end of the slave trade. Monica has plans to train the group on a number of songs, including South African, French and English ones, for a performance at the Summer Festival and/or Children Day. Monica is also involved with Sanjin (local staff) on preparing a new series of music workshops scheduled for every Friday at 2:00 pm. By playing boom-whackers (musical tubes), participants are given a chance to learn the basics of music theory, scales, harmony and rhytm as well as to acquire confidence in tasks involving cooperation with others. Several other international volunteers attend the workshop.  The first song was in the hall of the mountain king by Edward Grieg.
    • Drama Klub – A core group of 15 actors kept rehearsing single scenes, practicing the text and working on details.  In the next weeks, an international volunteer (Anne Bonitz) will work on a play for the group to focus on.
    • Sports workshops – for teenagers and young people
    • Dance Workshops – Anne (international volunteer) prepared some new dances for our young dancers: Penguin dance, American country dance, Italian dance and revised old Greek traditional dances.
    • Fun Day – a day of fun activities organised for Svitac Children.
  • Local language lessons for international volunteers
  • School homework help
  • Filming and Testimonials –  international volunteers Monica Reeves and Anne Bonitz realised this project in collaboration with Svitac local volunteers

 

ANNUAL EVENTS

  • Summer Camps 2016 – Svitac will organise summer camps between the 22nd and the 26th of August, and a Children Day on the 27th of August. The summer camps will include Creative, Language and Music workshops. Workshops will be held everyday from Monday to Friday in the youth centre, each of which lasting 2 and half hours.

 

EVS, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

  • In June, Svitac very much appreciated collaborating with 9 international volunteers: one ‘weltwarts’ volunteer from Germany, six EVS volunteers from the UK, Austria and Germany, and two self-fundraising volunteers from USA.
  • Gordana and Milos started the EVS re-accreditation process. The application has been submitted to SALTO and Gordana was informed that SALTO accreditator, Katarina Vuckovic, will visit Svitac in July
  • Svitac will send two volunteers from the 22nd of July to the 21st of August to Don Bosco, in The Netherlands, to volunteer in the project ‘Celebrating 50 Years of Volunteering (Vakantiebos): Youth Crossing the Borders for social Change and Innovation (Group EVS 2016)’. A project approved by the Dutch NA. Svitac recruited BiH volunteers Sadmir Nakicevic and Nikolina Ceko for this project.
  • In May, Gordana interviewed a number of EVS applicants form the UK via Skype. Five applicants have been selected and will start their volunteering experience in Svitac between June and September.
  • Gordana and Dina attended the conference ‘Challenges in our weltwärts voluntary service’ in Halle/Saale, Germany from the 9th to the 14th of May. The conference was organised by the sending organisations “Eirene”, “Schüler helfen leben”, ”Pax Christi Aachen” and “Friedenskreis Halle”. A main aim of the initiative was to discuss ways to improve weltwärts existing cooperation agreements. Partners exchanged their views on current practices, goals and impacts of the weltwärts voluntary service. All weltwärts partner organisations from South-Eastern Europe attended the conference.
  • Hertha Steinmaier – board member of Nürnberger Evangelischer Forum für den Frieden (NEFF) / Nürnberg Evangelical Forum for Peace – kindly invited Edina and Sanjin Vosanovic to present Svitac’s work to their partners at her organisation centre in Nürnberg, Germany. NEFF has been active in humanitarian, reconciliation and non-formal education work for more than 30 years. During their stay in Nürnberg (20th- 28th June 2016), Edina and Sanjin attended a series of meetings with representatives and members of NEFF, and participated to interviews with journalists from a radio station and a local newspaper (Nürnberger Nachrichten). On Thursday 23rd June, Edina and Sanjin presented Svitac’s work in the NEFF’s working spaces (Zionsgemeinde). The event was moderated by Elisabeth Fischer.The main aim of the visit was to meet and find new potential funding partners for Svitac; 400€ were kindly donated for Svitac Creative and Music workshops’ material and several articles about this visit were published in local German newspapers.

 

MEETINGS, and PRESENTATIONS

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

 

Categories:

Activities