College education for 10 talented students in BiH

BOSANA FOUNDATION

Scholarship and Personal Development Program

Quarterly Report

July-September 2016

Executive Summary:

This reporting period we are covering summer break for most of the Bosana students. Those that did not pass all of their exams had a pretty busy summer studying for October make up exams. During this slower than usual period, Bosana stuff however was kept busy. We accepted applications for new scholarship students and also were busy preparing for our student gathering we have each year to welcome new students in September.

Students and Program Update:

With the end of the summer, we are happy to officially report that 10 Bosana students have graduated this year. Some of them will seek employment while six students have decided that they will continue with their graduate studies that Bosana will also support financially.

We are also very excited to report that we have also accepted 11 new students for the upcoming 2016/17 school year as well as three students into our Professional Development program (they will not received financial support from Bosana but will have access to all other form of support).  

Highlights of the quarter:

• One of our students from Gorazde helped organize this year’s student gathering. These student gatherings are always organized in different parts of BIH and our students take part in helping us organize it. This time, 28 students were able to attend our gathering, including 8 new students who were just accepted this September. It was a beautiful weekend spent in the vicinity of Ruda Glava, a location from which you can see most of Bosnians mountaintops.

• Six of our graduate students will continue to obtain their Masters degrees. Bosana’s policy is that we continue to support them financially because in almost all of the cases, having a simple bachelors degree does not provide sufficient support for employment. This year, this is the largest number of graduate students that we have had and it has definitely put a large strain on our financials that we hope to overcome in the coming months.

• Our student from Mostar studying Medicine was awarded second time in a row as our best student and received a monetary award of approximately $300 dollars. Stipan has straight As a medical student, particularly, it deserves all kinds of praises.

• One of our students from Mostar was invited to be one of the main speakers at the Adriatic Youth Forum in Sarajevo. She was invited because two years ago she wrote a very impressive paper on the issue of youths’ lack of involvement and initiative in BIH and she was invited to speak on the issue.

• Two of Bosana students were selected among 22 other students from BIH to receive a Eurorail pass to travel for 20 days across Europe. Bosana also helped them financially and they were able to visit 10 countries and 12 cities. An experience of a lifetime.

• One of our students from Bihac who graduated this year from the University of Economics was selected among the lucky few for a paid internship at the local municipality. This is a significant achievement because her Masters degree requires of her to have a year of work experience in order to graduate college.

“Bosana students for Humanity” Project:

Bosana students continue to help their local communities every month. Every month they give portion of their scholarship and Bosana double matches the amount so they can help families in need. Each month students choose families in different cities.

In this quarter Bosana students decided to help one of our past graduate students who does not have any family or home to rebuild a house his family used to own.   Funds from months of June, July and August were all given to Edin to help him finance the rebuilding of his house so that soon he will have his own place to live. The house is very old and devastated; and Edin needs to rebuild most of the interior as well as the exterior. (plumbing, walls, fixtures etc.).

(picture of the house before and now).

For the month of September, our students decided to help two boys from two different families with school supplies in town of Bijeljina where one of our students lives. One boy lives with his father who is unemployed and only has occasional hourly jobs that are barely enough for food. Second boy lives with his mother, brother and sister and both were not able to buy school supplies.

Challenges:

This has been a very eventful quarter but we have no significant challenges to report.