Food for kids at school in Bosnia

The new school year has started. This is a very difficult time for many children and parents in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For families with two or more children, the cost of the school lunches and textbooks add up to more than their monthly income. The Coronavirus pandemic makes it even more challenging for these families.

This is how your donation makes a difference to these children and their parents:

Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus, we have been supporting Bosnian families with food parcels. During the pandemic, many parents have lost their only source of income, making it inevitable that children will experience food shortages at home. Thanks to the help of our philanthropists, we have collected 200 large food packages (each worth € 102), of which 194 food packages were delivered.

In order to make this a success, we have decided to work together with the schools. The school selects families who are in need of a food package and supervises the delivery.

Our goal was to raise money for 300 children to finance school lunches during the 2020/2021 school year. With your help, we have achieved this goal before the start of the new school year. We want to thank all the people who contributed to this!

At the moment 256 children receive a daily lunch at these six primary schools:

• Podorašje in Srebrenik (32 children)
• Zahid Barucija in Vogošca (42 children)
• Izet Šabic in Hotonj (23 children)
• Musa Cazim Catic in Zenica (71 children)
• Mak Dizdar in Zenica (50 children)
• Miroslav Kreleza in Zenica (38 children)

The Coronavirus policy differs per school. For example, some schools to which we donate, have stopped school lunches. We still have room to help one or two other schools.

The fundraising for the next school year has started. For € 9 per month, one child receives lunch at school for a whole month.

The beginning of every school year is equally difficult for parents due to the great financial cost it brings to the family. Apart from the basics – such as school uniform, footwear and other school supplies – parents must pay a lot of money for textbooks. Government support for this is minimal, therefore parents are left to manage it themselves. To avoid excessive costs they often try to buy second hand textbooks. However, due to regular changes in publishers, parents are often left without this option either. Unfortunately this has a negative effect on the children: sometimes it takes weeks to get a hold of textbooks, so they have to find alternatives in order to learn, such as photocopying, borrowing or even copying text by hand during school breaks.

A large number of families in Bosnia live in poverty and cannot afford to buy school textbooks for their children. Your donations ensure those children will get access to the books they need, and 100% of what you give goes to this purpose only. Textbooks purchased through donations will become school property – once used by students, books are returned to the school at the end of the year for the next year to use.

Currently we have purchased textbooks for 30 children at two primary schools. With this initiative we hope to be able to help more children in the next school year.

Thank you for being a part of our journey, it means so much to have a supporter like you! If you have questions or suggestions be sure to reply to this email. We would love to hear from you.

Best regards,
Almasa, Alma, Ermina, Alen
Charity: Bosnian Kids