The May story takes us to the central part of BiH, to the west of the Central Bosnia Canton to Jajce, the hometown of Mirnes Hadžić. Mirnes spent most of his life in Jajce, where he still lives today, and is a lawyer by profession.
Mirnes’ path of youth work and work with young people began at the end of 2016 and happened, as he says, quite spontaneously when, as an unemployed young person, he applied for a job advertisement announced by the Jajce Center for Education and Socializing. He was engaged in the project “Economic Empowerment of Youth” as a coordinator for the unemployed, and that’s where it all really started.
“Through the mentioned project implemented by the company Kolektiv d.o.o. from Sarajevo (Posao.ba) and the Center for Education and Socializing Jajce in cooperation with the Municipality of Jajce I started working on youth work for the first time, because I was mainly engaged in the field of education of unemployed young people. My engagement in this field continued after the project, we started cooperation with the Municipality of Jajce and launched the project “Business Center Jajce” in order to reach unemployed young people who need help when applying for a job on the one hand, and the unemployed young people who have their own business idea, but do not have the knowledge or financial means to start and register it on the other hand. Based on previous experience and knowledge, we have created guidelines for further action that include systematic support for the unemployed from the area of Jajce, but also for young people who want to start their own business.”
As Mirnes states, more than 40 youth businesses have been started within the Jajce Business Center since 2016, of which over 30 are still active today.
“Excellent results have certainly been achieved, especially in terms of self-employment of young people from Jajce. Of course, all this would not be possible without the financial support of the Municipality of Jajce and other partners who have allocated funds for youth business ideas.”
In 2018, as a young man who recognizes the importance of continuous improvement and research of new approaches to youth with whom he works, Mirnes attended and successfully completed the Training for Professional Associates for Youth Work organized and conducted by the Institute for Youth Development KULT. The training, as he says, helped him to strengthen his own capacities, but he finds it especially valuable that he managed to explore new ways of work and decide which skills he wants to improve.
“The biggest impression was the realization that non-formal education of young people is largely present, and that as such it helps young people to focus and build for life. A positive surprise was that each of the participants was engaged in different areas of work with young people, and the complete training was an opportunity to learn from each other, from personal experiences, current situation, strengths and problems that each of us faces in their work. In addition, the training enabled networking and mutual cooperation of people from all over BiH and provided an opportunity for each of us to understand whether working with young people is something we want to do in the future. I was fascinated by the scope of engagement and motivation of my colleagues who really did their best to create better conditions for the young people they work with, each in their own way in the organizations in which they were engaged. That year, if I remember correctly, there were over 70 applications for training, which means that a large number of organizations understand the importance of this training.”
According to Mirnes, the youth sector in BiH is in a difficult situation, partly due to the crisis caused by the pandemic, and mostly due to the lack of adequate care for young people by institutions at all levels of government.
“The situation is certainly more difficult than it was two years ago, especially due to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Numerous youth organizations based their work, among other things, on international exchanges of volunteers, which were completely suspended due to the COVID-19. Also, the neglect of young people by state and entity authorities greatly affects the overall situation of the youth sector. We should point out the initiatives of the umbrella bodies for youth, the Youth Council of FBiH and the Youth Council of RS BiH, which certainly fight for young people every day, but are often rejected with their initiatives by the competent ministries, unfortunately.”
Although Mirnes’ professional engagement is currently not directly related to the youth sector, this young man is bravely fighting to constantly progress and achieve results in the profession. He is an employee of a local construction company, where he works as a legal advisor, but he is also happy to find time to work with young people and for young people, often as a guest lecturer at workshops dealing with youth entrepreneurship.
Looking to the future, he says he still resists going abroad, although he does not completely rule out that option.
At the end of this month’s story, Mirnes Hadžić tells young people to be persistent in their actions:
“I think that young people should have space to act, especially if it is about activism that contributes to the development of primarily the local community, and then the sector in which these young people are active. They certainly have to give space for time to do its part, because at least in my experience it is the only way to implement a certain idea and be noticed by decision makers. I don’t want to tell them to just think about staying in BiH, that would be really selfish. Every young person who leaves BiH can return with new ideas and even greater ambitions and perseverance to help young people and the youth sector in BiH. I would say that they should be persistent in their intentions and in their actions”, concludes Mirnes.
