Dozens of migrant children spending the winter in the north-west of Bosnia have on Monday enrolled in workshops intended to prepare them for regular classes.
“I can write only a few of Bosnian words. Fish, baby and so on,” said 8-year old Asma from Iran.
She learned the Cyrillic alphabet while she was in Serbia. Here in Bihac, she is going to learn the Latin alphabet, said Asma.
The workshops for migrant children aged between six and 15 were organised in four elementary schools in the town of Bihac.
They are still not attending regular classes but the creative workshops are expected to socialise them and release them of the trauma they might have gone through.
Each of the four groups counting up to 30 migrant children is supervised by two teachers.
“The workshops are primarily prepared in the way to help the children who experienced the situations they better did not see. The workshops deal with art, painting, singing, music,” said Jasminka Henda, one of the teachers.
Over 100 migrants have undergone medical examinations and some 30 will do the same by end of the week.
“They are placed in separate rooms where they will socialise, get familiar with other children and the school, and finally those kids who stay here and whose parents express wish for that will be included in the classes as regular students,” according to Damir Omerdic, regional education minister in the Una-Sana Canton (USK).
Representatives of the international organisations helping migrants in Bosnia say this was probably their happiest and the most positive working day in this part of the country.
The programme is carried out in cooperation of the USK Education Ministry, the World Vision, Save the Children, UNHCR and UNICEF.
