Ongoing AfterSchool Tutoring for 70 orphans in BIH

BOSANA FOUNDATION

After School Program Report

January - March 2019

Number of volunteer instructors:15

Average number of students:70

Number of workshops held:3 times a week for three hours  

Type of classes held:Intro to Math, English, German, Physics, chemistry, Agro & Eco math and extracarricular activities like a handicrafts, robotics and programing, jewlery making.

Program Summary:

During this reporting period, being the period of exams and end of one semester, the instructions were directed to help students learn things that they would need to succesfuly pass their classes and improve bad grades. We also focused this quarter on programming and robotics, as well as the creative workshops.

Instructive lessons

In the month of January our Afterschool program participants who attend elementary and high school were on vacation. Only 7 program participants had lectures and final exams for the winter semester. Through the vacation period for the month of January, we organized various educationally and creative workshops three times a week. Workshops in the field of programming and robotics, English language, German language, drawing on a foil, iron drawing, etc. were attended by 70 of our Afterschool program participants. In February and March we held instructions three times a week, sometimes as needed up to five times per week. Particular progress we noticed noticed participants like Diana, who is a 9-year-old girl with a learning disability. She has had a lot of bad math grades since mid January when we started tutoring her in mathematematics, physics and English, but in March we started noticing progress. Three times a week we practiced mostly mathematics because her mathematics posed the biggest problem. Through work with volunteers who are professors of mathematics and informatics Diana started to handle tasks on her own. Apart from Diana, 70 of them have progressed in the subject of mathematics, informatics, foreign languages. Muhamed is another participants that we helped improve his math grades. Muhammad had a problem with mathematics in the field of intregrals and functions. We practiced with him five times a week. After a month of intensive work, we did not see any success and even thought Muhamed had tried he still received negative grades. Only after the third month of hard work and learning with Muhamed the results turned positive.

Workshops (Programing, Robotics and Creative)

During the month of January, February and March, aside from the regular instructions under the After School program, we also held workshops related to programming and robotics. The workshops were attended by 58 participants. We taught them how to construct a robot and how to program it. We divided them by the age. Children from 7 to 10 years of age, attended the home of Lego WeDo2 and Lego Boost, where they had the possibility to develop their competential skills and constructive ability to build a robot in the first part of the workshop, and then program it through the programming language Scratch, Makeblock, etc. In Addition to education and workshops in the field of robotics and programming, our participants have had the opportunity to attend workshops in the field of creative workshops (Decoupage, iron drawing, drawing on foil, making jewelry). About 50 participants showed interest in these creative workshops for decoupage, drawing with an iron that was very interesting to them.

Parties, Gatherings and Holiday Shows

As part of the After School Program, we have also made an effort to create some free time and fun activities for socializing. To familiarize our program participants with the Institutions in the City of Zenica we continued with visits in January and February. We visited the Institute for Health and Food Safety where participants were informed about the services, activities and work of this public health institution. We visited the ZEDA-Zenica development agency, social protection Centre, youth Centre INPUT, Cantonal Hospital, as well as Retirement Home. Our goal was to make our participants acquainted with these institutions, see how they work. For 1st of March – BIH Independence Day - we organized an all day fun gathering with sweets and muffins and flags of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Each year, our participants are delighted with this entertainment and socializing. Besides celebrating Independence Day, we also marked and celebrated a few more birthdays as well.

Plans for next quarter

Our plans for for the following quarter are to continue to work with our program participants in the field of instructive teaching to help them, and on the other hand to complete their free time with educational activities. Starting with mid-June, once the summer holiday starts, we have planned to increase our activities and to include older children and minors in some of our summer actives and projects to do something useful by earning allowance. We will continue to work on educating participants in the field of robotics and expanding their knowledge and developing their competences. For some, it is also our goal to help them complete requirements to graduate from high school. We are also planning to organize workshops about self-confidence as well as writing business plans. We want to establish and encourage our participants who have no job to learn how to be entrepreneurs. We plan to initiate education of self-sustainability to teach participants to be independent and to lead their own lives.