By Ljiljana Vasic | Director
Dear Friends, Do you remember our “Karate Kid”, Natalija?
Natalija M, was the first child from displaced and refugee families in Serbia who we offered a scholarship from your donations. At the time, she was a 10-year-old girl who had to stop practicing karate because her family could not afford a local bus ticket twice a week for her to go to the practice hall from a refugee camp in which her 4-member family lived in one room. As internally displaced family from Kosovo and Metohija, her family received around 80 Euro of social assistance from the State, whilst medicine for her father who had had a severe heart attack was around 90 Euro per month.
With the first month’s scholarship money, she bought a monthly bus pass so that she could continue practicing her favourite sport.
Five years later, at the age of fifteen, only three weeks after her father had passed away, she won the gold medal at the European Championship for cadets in Romania. Whenever you would ask her what she wanted to study and do in life, the answer was the same: to study sports and physical education, to become a coach or PE teacher.
Last autumn, she passed the entrance exam at the Sports and Physical Education Faculty 200 km away from her home and moved alone to a new town, new level of education, new karate club.
In January this year, she became an official member of the National Competition Team in the senior category. In July, she completed the first year of University with general average grade 8.55. Last month, Dean of her faculty figured out that she managed to study there only because she was receiving a scholarship from your donations. He wrote us a letter on the Faculty Letterhead and signed it as his personal and faculty plea to us and to you. He wrote: “We, the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education in the city of Nis, would like to inform you about the success of our student Natalija M who achieved the excellent grades in the first year of her studies and has enrolled into the second year in the category of students whose studies are financed by the State. We are very happy to have Natalija as the student of our Faculty because, through her personal example, she shows to everyone how excellent results could be achieved despite all the obstacles. We would like to ask your organisation and donors to continue supporting her with scholarship so that we could together support this girl who is achieving extraordinary academic and sports results”.
This letter has touched us deeply, has made us proud of her and even more determined to help Natalija, but also many other children and young people in similar situations reach their dreams, get an opportunity to develop their potential and achieve their goals.
And as Natalija is continuing her studies whilst preparing for the National Competition and World Karate Championship in December, we are hoping that you will continue supporting our work. The work that we do is entirely funded through donations and would not be possible without the philanthropic support of our community. We are counting on your support to help us surpass our goal and invest in our children's future. Please consider donating. If you can't donate, consider sharing Natalija's story with your friends or starting a fundraiser. Don't forget to stay in touch with us, over Facebook or Instagram, we’d love to hear from you.
With love,
Pomoc deci team
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