YOUTH WORKERS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
This month’s story about youth workers in Bosnia and Herzegovina takes us to Zavidovići, where we talked with Jasmin Mehić. Jasmin was born in Zenica, and he finished elementary and high school in Zavidovići, where he lives and works today. Faced with the impossibility of finding a job within his profession, Jasmin, as he said, found work, interest and love in the non-governmental sector due to a combination of different, positive circumstances.
He begins the story of his journey by emphasizing that he is a lawyer by profession, and a youth worker by occupation.
“For a long time, it was very difficult to find a job. I was engaged in agriculture for some time because I could not find a job within my profession. The idea to be engaged in youth work arose from my engagement in the Agency for Local Democracy. My first leadership and coordination job was in 2013 at an international camp called “Ćuprija” where young people from BiH, Luxembourg and Kosovo participated. It was then that I first became acquainted with youth work, leadership, responsibilities, anxiety and insomnia. Although I have been in a relationship with young people for a long time, I have officially become a youth worker at the end of KULT’s training.”
Out of need and desire to improve my skills, in 2019, Jasmin attended and successfully completed the Training for Professional Associates for Working with Youth, and thus officially became a youth worker.
“Through my work, during implementation of various activities, I felt the need to improve my skills. I realized that I was deprived of a lot of things. The training helped me a lot. It has given me new perspectives in my work, new views, insights where there is room for improvement. It is not the same to complete this kind of training at the age of 20 and 30. I realized how many omissions and shortcomings I have, and how we should work on ourselves, so we should improve in working with young people. Working with young people and working for young people requires quality training, and this training is quality per se.”
Jasmin is happy to talk about his impressions from this training, and as the greatest value she singles out acquaintances and contacts with other people who work with and for young people, whom he met during the training.
“I remember all the modules in Spajalica, the trainers, the tasks we did after the modules, lessons and presentations. I am very satisfied with the methodology and content of the training. The most valuable thing I got from this training are acquaintances and contacts. An exceptionally high-quality group of young and good people, talented, from various industries, gathered at this training to get to know each other, work together, to improve. Another value is the aspect of training at which I learned more about regulations and methods for youth work.”
Jasmin still uses and applies the knowledge and experience gained today in working with young people in the Agency for Local Democracy, where he is engaged as a youth associate. Since 2017, he has been the local coordinator of the project “Support to young people in local communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, which focuses on improvement and development of its local community.
“I am working on the field, on the street, hanging out with young people, learning from them, trying to understand their needs and desires in order to improve the situation. I can’t be good at my job, provide young people with quality training, content, activities – to empower them if I don’t ask myself questions, if I don’t educate myself.”
Jasmin also told us more about the current situation of the youth sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina about the needs that he, as an experienced youth worker, noticed:
“We need trainings on topics that the Institute for Youth Development KULT organizes in order to have a future network of youth workers who love what they do. We need youth centers with programs and animators who love their job. There used to be a Youth Center in Zavidovići, and as a result of its existence, we now have eminent experts useful to the community and society. Today you have a situation where in our local community 70% of young people do not know who the youth officer in the Municipality of Zavidovići is. The question is why is this so? It takes resources, time and will. More examples of good practice are needed and I would like to single out KULT and PRONI because of the capacities they have, then the Youth Center Bugojno, Nahla, Local Democracy Agencies (Prijedor, Mostar, Zavidovići) and other organizations and centers that do quality work, from education to exchanges. We have quality points of work with young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the question is what do we want? Do we want to publishing information – to be a service for young people or do we want to specifically empower them from volunteering to activism (concrete actions) so that they can take the next steps themselves?”
He says that he does not know what life and the future bring will bring, but in a couple of years, he still sees himself in the non-governmental sector, working with young people.
“It is a difficult job to work with young people, and quite complex. Still, I would love to stay in the youth sector. Working in the non-governmental sector and with young people is more imaginative, broader, while my profession is a set of “fenced/already determined” directions. Within my profession I would not have the opportunity to change things for the better, or I think so, but I have definitely changed my opinion and perspectives by joining the NGO sector and working with young people. I would like to stay in our country.”
Although he considers it a great responsibility to give advice to someone, he tells young people to look for opportunities for themselves, to initiate changes themselves based on their needs and the environment they live in, their local community.
“I advise young people to get to know themselves and the place where they live, to create and initiate changes, starting from themselves. To look for opportunities, gain experience, to surround themselves with the positive things. Please do not to be passive, do not express their dissatisfaction only on social media, and not even try to change anything. We have to work, we have to start doing something, don’t wait for money from your parents, earn it yourself. Don’t belittle or insult anyone until you put on his/her coat and shoes. Don’t suffer violence! Don’t throw garbage in nature!”
