College education for 10 talented students in BiH

BOSANA FOUNDATION

Scholarship and Personal Development Program

Quarterly Report

January- March 2014

Executive Summary:

The first quarter of this year has been thus far the most promising start of the new year with so many great opportunities and productive results that we hope will spill to all other quarters for the remainder of the year. Our students were also in the midst of exams so our focus was to also make sure they produce good results.  Still, the most exciting part of this quarter was the Bosana students Team building that the Bosana Board has decided to become a focal part of the scholarship program each year. 

Students and Program Update:

All thirty-eight (38) Bosana students in this first quarter had to prepare for their midterms and final semester exams that were scheduled in the first and second month of this quarter. Few of our students had also “carried over” few of their exams from the previous academic year that they had to pass in order to be able to advance into the following year.  For some this presented a problem and a lot more work but only one student that was already on suspension failed to pass his exams and will be removed from the scholarship program.  The rest of the students were taking exams only from the classes taken in the fall/winter semester of 2013/2014. Overall it was a successful semester.

Majority of our students have taken and passed all of their exams. We still have few students that were not able to take exams due to the unavailability of professors and they will have to wait for April to be able to take these exams.  Other students were not able to take those classes that they did not pass in this semester because they are not offered in the midterm of the year but rather only at the end of each year.  This year, we are expecting to have seven graduates and we are trying to help these students take their final exams and prepare for the next step, whether we are talking about continuing their higher education or venturing into the employment world.

Since Bosana Foundation registered in 2010, this will be our first “graduating class” of our scholarship recipients so we are very excited to show our donors these seven graduates who otherwise would not be able to have a college diploma. For those graduating this year, we have transferred them into our Professional Development program, which is more geared towards preparing them for life after college.   This means that they are excused from volunteering the 10 hours minimum that our students must complete and rather we encourage them to spent this time studying, writing their resumes, applying for jobs and possibly even starting to either volunteer or work at potential companies that might employ them after finishing their universities. 

We have also forged a new partnership with CPE (Centre for Professional Education) that will give all of our students take free classes that they offer: among them are language classes, computers, graphic and web design, etc.

Worth mentioning is one of our students Mirzet Omerovic studying Economy at the University in Tuzla who drastically improved his grades after receiving a laptop donation from a company in Sarajevo, “Wood Team” whom we contacted amongst other donors asking to help us get Mirzet a laptop because he really needed it for his studies and also to be able to make additional income to help his parents.  This new laptop inspired Mirzet to try even harder to succeed and also to show his appreciation to Bosana Foundation and our donors.  This shows how our students recognize the opportunities we are giving them and are willing to work hard. 

Nevertheless, the most rewarding and exciting news of this quarter is the students’ gathering for Bosana Team Building that took place for two days, which included an 8hour hike to the highest village on the Bjelasnica mountain and the next day rafting on the Neretva river in Konjic.  The goal of the team building was for all of our students to get together, collaborate and learn more about nature and history of Bosnia and Herzegovina.   Our goal was also for students to do something that none of them have ever done, to test their limits and through this team building of survival in nature, extreme weather, necessity for collaboration and support of one another learn that only together can they achieve real results, that they put limits on themselves what they think that they can and cannot do and that the hard and most exhausting moments are when you are at the top, right before you succeed.  This was an amazing adventure and an eye opener for many students who thought they could never climb a mountain, walk for that long, had fear of water, lacked social skills, etc.  At the end of these two days, all students went home with new and real friendships, appreciation for one another and themselves, and with a memory that will last them a lifetime.  It was also a nice and rewarding break for many after the exams and before the new semester.

During this Team Building weekend students also presented their Vision Boards, an assignment that was given to them to give them an opportunity to portray their hopes and dreams of the future. Students voted amongst themselves and chose Edin Serifovic vision board as the best one. His reward will be to help him towards a realization of one of the visions from the board, which will be most likely a bike trip to Greece this summer.  Selma Kurtanovic vision board was awarded second place and she won 100KM.

Final update of this quarter was the essay contest that we offered to all of our students to write on the topic “how would they address the unemployment problem of the youth in BIH”.  The prize for the best essay was an all paid trip to Los Angeles for one of the students to attend our 5^th Annual Benefit and for a chance to meet our donors.  On march 31^st, an essay committee comprised of seven (7) members selected Nadja Kasumovic essay as the best one.  Nadja was also selected our best student last year and received a laptop.  

Program Challenges:

Some of the students had issues with their exams due to some of their personal problems but also not being able to pass their exams and therefore not satisfying our expectations from each student that’s required to maintain the scholarship.  While we always do our best to avoid any student losing the scholarship, for some its simply not possible unless they do their part and pass the exams. Currently, we have one student who has notified us on time that due to his medical problems he might not be able to successfully complete the year and we are always sympathetic to students who come to us on time and show that they are doing their best bust are simply prevented due to medical problems.  However, one of the students has lost his scholarship after this semester because his contract stated that unless he passes all of his grates in this semester he will lose the scholarship because he was already given a second chance when he decided to completely change majors and start from beginning.   However, since he is a child from an orphanage without any family, we have given him a third and last chance that he has to pass all of his classes by the end of the school year and if he is able to continue into the next school year in September, that we will reinstate his scholarship.  This is the final chance that we will give him; however, from now until September his scholarship funds are frozen.

Donor driven update worth mentioning: 

At the end of January, Selma Cosic, a young lady originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina how now lives and works in Richmond, Virginia organized a private fundraiser with a group of her closest friends and she raised $1000. Soon after this event, she also decided to start a campaign to raise additional $3,000 by running a marathon with a group of her friends.  She managed to even surpass that amount and raise $3,600.  In addition to that, she will use her companies matching funds to match everything that she has raised and she hopes that by June of this year, she will have donated to Bosana together with her company $10,000.  This is just one of the events that has been organized by our supporters in 2014 and it only goes to show how much Bosana Foundation is making an impact on young people both in BiH and around the world.

                                                                 BOSANA FOUNDATION

                                         Scholarship and Personal Development Program  

                                                                   Quarterly Report

                                                             October - December 2013

Executive Summary:

In the previous quarter, Bosana Foundation had accepted eleven (11) additional scholarship recipients that in this quarter we focused on assimilating to our programs, with our previous students and evaluating their readiness to succeed in the school year, as well as determining what we need to do to on individual basis to help these new students. Since our numbers are growing, and now we have thirty one (31) students, it has become even more evident that the focus of this quarter and the following year, will have to be geared towards implementing a more vigilant and systematic monitoring and evaluation of individual students, especially new students that are still trying to get used to their new obligations.  Several new scholarship recipients already were volunteers and they had no problem continuing with their volunteer obligations, while few of them still needed some time to find the organization and to adjust their school schedules to this duty. In all, since the school year started at the end of October and students do not start their exams until January, there is not much to report on student’s academic status.  However, we do have some interesting news about new fundraisers and students’ initiatives.

Students and Program Update:

New academic year brings new obligations and additional tasks for our students because they start new classes and with that also fitting in their volunteer obligations. When it comes to academic success, this has been a fairly calm quarter because they do not start exams until mid January. Therefore, most of our students focused on attending their classes, volunteering, some even decided to use these couple of months to put in some extra volunteer hours so they have more time for studying once the exam begin.  Some also requested to access the funds available for each student as part of their professional development to either sign up for language classes, attend seminars or purchase laptops because they determined that it was necessary to assure success in the coming school year. 

Here are some of the highlights of this quarter:

• One of our donors in Sarajevo, BIH has given one of our students an apartment for use without a charge.  This is a student that receives our partial scholarship (her housing is not covered); however, her situation worsened and instead of having to pay for her housing, we found a generous donor willing to give her an apartment for use.  In exchange, she helps our donor’s ailing mother with brining groceries and medicine. 
• We have mentioned that Nadja Kasumovic was a recipient of the Student of the Year Award for year 2013. Nadja received monetary award and she used this award to buy herself a laptop, which should make her studying and writing academic papers much easier.   
• We found one of our students a part time job during the holidays where she will be able to earn an income and ease the following few months.  
• One of our graduating students at the Art Academy also started a paid internship at a company where he was the head designer for one of the bags specifically manufactured for the Volkswagen.  They are currently in production and will be available for sale in the first quarter of 2014.   
• In December, one of our own students, Edin Serifovic, has shown an initiative and with his college friends created a project for first “Street Workout- park” in Tuzla and in the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The goal of this project is to change the bad habits that are so common among young people today, to help them start working out, spending time outside, prevent unhealthy life habits and diseases that inevitably will follow. This project already received partial funds from the local foundation, students are looking for additional sponsors and they are hoping to complete this project by March of 2014.

Program Fundraising & Financial Updates

In October, a fundraising event held at the Gymnasium Apeldoorn in Holland, was completed. This event was organized by a high school student originally from BiH.  Sehida Begovic was the girl that started this, and the goal was to use the 100^th birthday of her school for fundraising, and all the proceeds were dedicated to the Bosana Foundation.  The school managed to raise 6,628.00 in one day. They have sold food, jewelry, entertainment, etc. This event shows that Bosana is making an impact not only on lives of orphaned and marginalized youth that it severs but on young people all around the world.

Program Challenges:

As our number of students grows and our volunteer staff number remains the same, we are noticing a challenge in maintaining as close of a relationship with all of our students as we had in the past.  Their problems are many but fortunately, with many issues we have dealt in the past so we have a protocol to fall back on.  In addition, monitoring all students’ progress remains a challenge and so we need to standardize and simply our monitoring tools to assure that it covers all possible challenges and yet it does not take more of our time. 

The upcoming challenge in the coming quarters will be finding more resources for our professional development program, especially those students who are graduating this year because we want to make sure that we best prepare them for the world after college, including helping them become self-sufficient citizens with a job after college.