Hana:
Boro Ilić from Brčko believes that the purpose of life is helping others. He found himself in this and he is already well-known in this city thanks to his charity work. He started his activities at the Youth Centre, and now he is managing the association Trka za život. So far, they have had numerous actions that attracted attention. They were helping people in trouble, whether it was disease or poverty. He is thankful to people that respond to actions and help their work and says that it is always necessary to only initiate an action, then people do this themselves later on. In addition to charity work, they are also planning to engage in social entrepreneurship, because he believes it to be an opportunity to help persons to earn an income.
Boro Ilić:
In this city, most persons recognise me and know me thanks to charitable activities. Several years ago, I joined the youth centre Vermont, which then became the youth association ”Trka za život”. Today we are active, we have charity activities on an almost daily basis, depending on the needs. People call us and we do what we can. What is mostly needed is a basis, someone to initiate it, to present it, and then people do the rest.
I have to say that people from Brčko are some of the greatest humanitarians. It is irrelevant who it is about, they call on their own initiative. Sometimes it would happen that I would walk in the city and do an activity for a child, and they would stop me, put money in my pockets, although we avoid that, that is not the way how we work. There is a bank account or some other way, to prevent various abuses, etc.
So far, the organisation was quite successful in all segments of charity work. We have great support from all NGOs and we are also members of the Resource Centre. The Resource Centre is maybe the best thing that happened here – they provide us with all resources, offices, everything in order for an organisation to have a seat, in order for someone to be able to come, hold a meeting, seminar, etc.
As of this year, charity work is our main activity. Last year we established a youth association because we would like to dedicate our work to youth. We see that everyone is saying that youth are leaving. And I always say – maybe young people are leaving because there is nothing to make them stay, nobody to help them. It is not just about going to school, graduating from the faculty and waiting for a job. Maybe one can sometimes do something on one’s own, simply to get started. This year we will initiate the topic of social entrepreneurship, because we believe that it is a good one and it has been quite current worldwide. Here that is not the case, and I have not heard about any social company in Brčko.
We were planning to do it this year, if everything goes well. We applied for a project, if it is accepted, we will try, because there are more and more household industries, where people produce at home, but have no possibility to sell that online. They cannot sell it in a shopping mall. If, for example, ten women that make jewellery, organised themselves to establish a company – that would imply rather small obligations in comparison to the facilitated sale of their goods. This is what we will try to do now.
Although I believe that social contributions should be increased and a solution should be found for these really difficult welfare cases.
We worked a lot with children that are part of the inclusive education model, so that out of 20 children, there are 2-3 with disabilities, and once they complete the school, they stay with their parents. We worked in a way with these children that have somewhat greater abilities in order to help them to learn, so that also parents came. There are children that are even today engaging in some of these activities.
You can follow the activities of the association (and potentially support them) through the fb page Trka za život.
