Older Brother, Older Sister project- Supporting children who come from socially excluded and economically disadvantaged background

The Citizens’ Association for Prevention of Addiction has been implementing the Older Brother, Older Sister project since 2004 in partnership with Social Work centres in Sarajevo and East Sarajevo.

The main objective of the project is to socially include, provide support in social and psychological context to vulnerable children through voluntary engagement of students. With the voluntary placement of students, the children receive support they are deprived of in their families, specifically relating to making healthy social contacts in their environment and in this way reducing the deviance in all areas of their life, therefore reducing the level of social exclusion.

While spending time with volunteers, the children gain a new perspective on life, outside their families. The children spend quality time, playing, visiting the City Centre, have lunch together, go for a pizza or a cake, sometimes to the cinema or theatre and learn how to use public transport. All these are experiences are often first of this kind that a child would have. For this reason, we make sure that the quality time with children is based on simple activities that the children do not have opportunity to carry out with their parents or guardians. The children are in need of an adult who will show them and teach them “ordinary” aspects of life, such as buying popcorn while at the cinema, visiting the Zoo, playing football in a park, using the public transport. It is through these activities that they learn to be independent, gain self-confidence and therefore become more integrated in the main stream society.

Due to the sensitive nature of the work the volunteers do, they are supported and supervised by professionals in the area of social work, social education, psychologists our partners in the Social Work centres.

Since 2004, the project has included about 150 volunteers, which means that 150 children, boys and girls had their own older brother or an older sister.