Transcript of the podcast:
Džemil Belegić is a representative of the Youth Association New Vision from Novi Travnik. They are active in the Central Bosnia Canton and are unfortunately the only organisations in Novi Travnik working on youth issues. I talked to him about the activities of the New Vision, about their plans for the future, his thoughts on youth, and the everlasting puzzle how to keep young people in BiH.
Džemil Belegić:
The New Vision was established in late 2014. A group of young enthusiasts wanted to move some things at their local level, to see some changes. We originally planned to work exclusively with environment and environment-related issues, but when we started working with young people, we saw that unfortunately many things are not working and that’s needed to address other aspects as well. So we then started developing programmes in youth education, programmes for promotion of volunteerism and youth activism, and developing a sector for promotion of democratic values with a special focus on preventative violence programmes that’s present among young people.
It is important for us to work with young people in secondary schools on the promotion and prevention of gender-based violence for it is the fact that violence in our country is very much present. The fact is that schools are unfortunately still unwilling to talk or take concrete action when it comes to violence, because usually violence, as adults tend to believe, happens to someone else, not my child, so why should I talk about it.
In working with young people, we’ve realised that they themselves do not understand what violence is and what it can be, which can be used as an act of violence against another person. There is a lot of violence, especially peer violence, and what we try to turn the attention to lately is the increasing presence of cyber bullying, online violence, which will remain unknown to parents in 90% of the cases since we unfortunately live in a country where somehow social networks came overnight, while computer literacy of parents is quite bad.
And literally, parents today do not control what their children do on the Internet, rather the opposite – children see “search history” of their parents.
At every moment we have around 60 volunteers who are active and available for any activity. Especially during the floods, our volunteers proved to be very useful because we did a seven-day action that included collecting aid through providing assistance to flooded areas. I was fascinated by how much energy was there in young people and how brave they were in all that. Volunteers are included in street actions, campaigns to combat violence, the campaign to raise environmental awareness, promote democratic values, and what I particularly want to point out is that we still have very successful cooperation with the Social Welfare Centre and some kindergartens in the city. We have a successful cooperation with the municipality. We work as much as we can on youth issues and somehow we develop this network with as many friends and non-governmental organisations and different networks as possible.
In your opinion, how useful are your activities to the society and the community?
I’d think very useful because if you have a town without a Youth Council, at least not for the time being. Unfortunately, it had to be shut down due to inactivity of individuals. And if the youth see the only comfort in the Youth Centre and the New Vision then you know you’re on the right track. The very fact that most young people who have gone through our various workshops are now either studying abroad or here in BiH and that these people always come back with some positive impressions and tell you “you encouraged me to be what I want in my life.”
In your case, how helpful or unhelpful is the political situation?
I think that the current political situation in the country is only helping those who use the dark side of the BiH legal system. Politics could very well start things in this country, but I have the feeling that politics in this country is just empty talk without a genuine desire to do anything really. Especially if you take the youth sector – politics always relies on some laws on youth, youth strategies, but that is all the dead letter on paper.
In your opinion, how could we keep young people in BiH?
Young people could stay in our country if politics would stop being hypocritical. When concrete measures are to be taken – from increasing the number of scholarships, for studying in public universities not to be considered primitive because unfortunately universities are underequipped. On the other hand, you have a huge percentage of young people who, unfortunately, see some private faculties as easier to study and they go to these private faculties to get the paper and the knowledge they acquire is very bad.
I’m not saying all private faculties are bad and that’s not what I’m trying to say. Quite the contrary, in my opinion, if private faculties globally are very influential and of good quality, why not have the same thing here too?
Secondly – the state must create an environment for young people where they feel safe. Most young people leave this country as they see no future. And if you don’t see the future, then you have no reason to spend another day in this country, it’s better to be in some Germany, Austria and so on. Where you know your rights are respected.
Another important segment that can be developed is that young people are legally recognised as someone who can develop the country. Now, there’s this other issue again of political hypocrisy when politicians tell you “young people are the future” and at the same time they’re on boards of five or six different commissions and don’t give a spot to anyone. Just take for example the number of different youth commissions in the parliament and who’s on board of these commissions.
Today, no matter how politicians complained that the NGO sector is not working, today it’s mostly the NGO sector that works with young people. Young people go to volunteer, join Erasmus, go everywhere in the world thanks to the NGO sector. I never read that some municipality has sent at a young boy or a girl to go to study somewhere, but this is probably resource or an Erasmus + Programme and so on.
I think politicians shouldn’t be serving these empty talks to young people because young people in this country are very smart and they see if something is wrong and they are simply leaving.
I’m not among those condemning young people for leaving because I think young people have the right to choose their future. If they feel safer in Europe – why not? There is no need for anyone here to be a hostage of our, unfortunately, nationalist politics. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s because there is nationalist politics here where children are separated from kindergarten so you end up having high-quality robots in secondary school who hate each other. I think politicians use this machine of division since childhood so that it would be easier to persuade some primary or secondary school student that some Muhamed shouldn’t hang out with Marko because Marko hates him apparently. And the young ones, at least, my generation knows who doesn’t hate whom and we know perfectly well that the only future in this country is our common future.
What about future plans of the New Vision?
Together with partner organisations in the UN Woman programme, the New Vision is currently working on two programmes in the coming period aimed at preventing gender-based violence. One is Medica from Zenica and the partner organisation “Women Associated” from Grahovo. On the other hand, in co-operation with XY Perpetuum Mobile and the Youth Strength, we are implementing Prevention of Gender-Based Violence in Schools in Travnik.
As for our work, our core is somehow in Novi Travnik, where unfortunately we are currently the only organisation dealing with youth issues. Here we continue with our efforts to combat violence and promoting these democratic values. What we are forced to do is unfortunately that we still have to deal with reconciliation issues in our town because Novi Travnik, no matter what politicians say, is unfortunately still divided into two ethnic fractions.
We have to work on this, but what concerns me the most in this whole story is still how closed are educational institutions that still do not want to offer to young people this opportunity to meet others and different from them. And then you have a big problem when you, as a non-governmental organisation of non-formal and informal education, it is very difficult for you to engage young people and to say “well see, you can change things together in this country.” Unfortunately, this is a problem where we are constantly trying to find adequate mechanisms but I have a feeling that it’s somehow wandering endlessly because as long as the top level doesn’t say to children that they must be together, you need to be together, I think the story of the NGO sector will not have so much impact.
