Svitac Project Report – May 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, Johanna Weng, Monica Reeves, Vanessa Brumen

Self-fundraising volunteers:  Theresa Bittmann, Alee Whiteman, Samantha Peterson

About 160 participants regularly attended Svitac’s activities in May, 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 language workshops – participants kept practising grammar by learning how to build short sentences with a subject, a verb and an object and practiced how to answer typical questions such as ‘how are you?’, ‘what is your favourite colour/food/film’ or ‘what is your hobby?’, etc. They also worked on expanding their vocabulary – e.g. by learning the names of clothes and rooms of the house in English and also frequently used verbs such as ‘to walk’, ‘to eat’, or ‘to sleep’, etc.
      • German language workshops – participants worked on sentence structure and word order and practiced what learned by writing full sentences with a subject, verb and an object and some new adjectives and expressions related to the weather. The younger group learned the first line of the German song “Das Auto von Lucio”.
    • 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 – This workshop started in April thanks to the initiative of an international volunteer (Vanessa). Since then, the number of participants has increased substantially. Classes are now starting an hour earlier to revise the programme already covered in April and so allow the new participants to catch up with the rest of the group. The programme has so far covered the following: the alphabet, articles, irregular and regular verbs, the use of nouns and simple questions commonly used to introduce yourself to others. The course engages participants to produce written outputs, to interact orally, and to exercise listening and pronunciation skills. Participants are given worksheets to work on and receive feedback on their progress. The course is very creative and entertaining, with many participants inviting their own friends to participate to share the fun!
    • Art&Crafts workshops – At the beginning of the month, the weather turned rainy again. Our younger artists found inspiration on the adverse weather conditions and produced lovely pictures, and drawings with the rain as main theme.
    • Music workshops – samba, guitar, music workshops for children -Younger participants  prepared the song “The Final Countdown”. They very much enjoyed playing percussions and learning the lyrics of the song. Divided in subgroups, some focused on practising percussions for the song, the others focused on learning the lyrics. They then played and sang the song all together. The Samba group continued to improvise on the rhythm they started working on last month and developed brakes and groove variations to it.  On occasion, the group also played more familiar compositions just for fun. International and local volunteers were attending the workshop whenever possible on their free time.
    • Drama Klub – This groups held several preparatory meetings to rehearse their play for the Spring Festival: “Karijes”. Full plays were practiced to give all actors a clearer idea of the structure of the play and their part in it. Single scenes will also be revised separately to refine details. All this preparation work entailed a lot of fun as usual!
    • Sports workshops – Volleyball – In April, an international volunteer (Jonas) set up a volley court and delivered some introductory volleyball workshops.  The group continued practicing and improving their skills, in particular on: serving the ball, skipping, jumping on the wall and line sprint from wall to wall. Sessions on volleyball techniques were integrated with aerobic exercises such as step-training, push-ups and sit ups to improve the performances of our athletes!
    • Dance Workshop – Children and new volunteers truly enjoyed these workshops. National dances, modern dances, break dance, free style and a lot more added variety and diversity as well as a lot of fun to the programme of activities.
  • Local language lessons for international volunteers
  • School homework help

 

ANNUAL EVENTS

  • FutureShort festival – Svitac participated to the 2016 spring edition of the Future Shorts Film Festival on Friday 27th of May. Future Shorts allows anyone, anywhere to set up a screening and join an international cinematic community. Future Shorts holds the ability to change the ways each of us engage with cinema, generating a global conversation. Since 2011 the festival has spanned over 300 cities in 90 countries, reaching an audience of more than 45,000 people. Internationally acclaimed short films have been screened in countless ways, from London to Tokyo, Cairo to Kabul, in music halls and town halls, theatres and galleries, in clubs, bars and warehouses. The short films that were screened in our centre were also screened in other 100 cities and 40 countries all over the world.
  • The programme of this year included the following short films:
  • Home Suite Home – Netherlands. dir.
  • Jeroen Houben Leidi – Columbia, UK. dir. Simon Mesa Soto 
  • Sunday Lunch – France. dir. Celine Deavux
  • Perfection is Forever – USA. dir. Marta Trifu
  • RATIONALE/ FAST LANE – USA, dir. Luke Monaghan
  • A HOLE IN MY HEART – Netherlands, France dir. Mees Peijnenburg
  • EDMOND – USA dir. Nina Gantz
  • Our audience in Brčko voted for Home Suite Home as their favourite film!
  • Spectators: 58

 

EVS, WELTWARTS AND OTHER VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAMMES

  • In May, Svitac very much appreciated collaborating with 7 international volunteers: one ‘weltwarts’ volunteer from Germany, four EVS volunteers from the UK, Austria and Germany, and three self-fundraising volunteer from Austria, Australia and USA.
  • Two BiH volunteers of the EVS project “EVS Looking to Future (Springbos 2016)” (Goran Antunovic from Brcko and Tamama Cangalovic from Sarajevo) returned from a month volunteering in Rijswijk and Amsterdam, The Netherlands (6th April – 6th May).
  • Theresa Bittmann (Austria) obtained her visa in May.
  • Monica Reeves (UK) and Vanessa Brumen (Austria) attended EVS on-arrival training which was held from 16th to 21st May in Sarajevo.
  • 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 opened a call for volunteers in March for these 2 positions and in April selected one volunteer who will attend the APV meeting with Milos in Don Bosco from the 24th to the 27th of May. The second volunteer will be selected in June.
  • 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 – representative of Nürnberger Evangelischer Forum für den Frieden (NEFF) / Nürnberg Evangelical Forum for Peace – 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. The main aim of the visit is to meet and find new potential funding partners for Svitac. The visit is scheduled to take place from the 18th to 28th June 2016.

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 the Brcko. The purpose of the last meeting was to share information about activities and plans for May and discuss the schedule of the activities to be held in the youth centre.

 

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