By Ljiljana Vasic | Director
Two and a half years ago, we shared with you a story of Djurdjina P, a girl who lost everything to the worst floods in the region in more than a hundred years. Just two weeks after her 11th birthday, her father saved her literally seconds before their house collapsed and was swept away together with everything the family had had. It took years for this girl to overcome trauma and nightmares that would wake her up in the middle of the night thinking that the water was drowning them all over again...
We provided this girl with the scholarship from the donations you made to help children victims of the floods . Other donors provided a small prefabricated house for her and her family on the other side of a small town of Krupanj in the Western Serbia. Her elder sister won the scholarship to go to Business College at the time. All this helped both Djurdjina and her family to start rebuilding their lives.
Today, Djurdjina is a proud teenager who has just graduated from the elementary school with all honours, who has received half a dozen Diplomas for excellence and awards at the knowledge competitions in different subjects and, above all, the Vuk Karadzic Award - a highest State Award for the extraordinary achievements in all educational areas. She has just been accepted at the General High School and has all the reasons in the world to be a happy accomplished teenager.
“I still can’t forget how everything just disappeared in a second. You know, these heavy rains over the last several weeks have just brought back the fear, I cried again and was only watching the skies and the river for days. The river started overflowing the banks again, but luckily, the raining stopped and the protection sand bags were enough to keep it there...”
Djurdjina doesn’t mention the other fear – how will she be able to go to the school from September, what she will wear and how she will buy the needed textbooks and school material for a new school, but it is obvious. Her father cannot work as he has become an invalid after being injured at work, her mother brings in the only small income into the household and they have no extra support from anywhere else. The secondary school is in the town, so she needs to go by bus and pay for the transport every day, the textbooks are expensive... And she never mentions a bike that she had wanted for a long time and got for her 11th birthday, two weeks before it disappeared in the floods. They have never had enough money to spare on a new bike again...
On July the 18th, from 9:00 in the morning Eastern Time (15:00 in Europe), GlobalGiving Foundation will match 50% every donation you make, up to 500 USD, as long as 120,000 Matching Funds last.
On this Bonus Day, you can help us continue providing the scholarships, buy textbooks or pay for the transportation costs or school snacks to Djurdjina and other children like her, whose lives have changed completely in the floods. Please, donate whatever amount you can on this day and as soon as the Bonus day starts (the available matching funds go fast).
Please, help us help these children to go on with their lives, put behind the disaster they went through and get the education they can and work hard for!
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