Wednesday, 06.05.2020.
ONLINE “TEA PARTY” (“FTESË PËR ÇAJ”) FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN FROM BUJANOVAC
Online activities for youth called “Tea Party” or “Ftesë për çaj” are held on the Zoom platform for 40 schoolchildren from our partner schools in Bujanovac within the project “Our city, our schools” implemented by the Government Serbia Coordination Body for the Municipalities of Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa and Group 484, with the support of the Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation from Switzerland. Intercultural exchange as one of the activities within the project “Our city, our schools” should have taken place between schoolchildren from Bujanovac and Switzerland in the SOS Children’s Village in Trogen, in the period 18 March – 4 April 2020, but it was cancelled due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Socialising with the group of children of Serbian, Albanian and Roma nationality, which we started at workshops in October at the Faculty of Economics, Bujanovac Department, continued to be organised through the online platform.
The first online “Tea Party” was held on Sunday, 11 April 2020, through the Zoom application with schoolchildren who did not go to their first intercultural exchange in Switzerland. We exchanged quarantine experiences and the way we coped with the new situation while drinking our favourite tea. We learned from each other that talking to close people, music, dancing, creative hobbies, listening to nature are our main supports in order to overcome the moments when we feel worried or scared. We maintain regular communication with the schoolchildren through the joint Viber group, and Sunday is our day for the online tea party.
One of the activities we did with youth was also “Write a letter to a friend from another city/country” where the schoolchildren were given the task of introducing themselves through the form of a letter to friends they were supposed to meet during the intercultural exchange in Switzerland. We talked about whether they had ever sent a letter by regular mail, and then we read the most interesting parts of the letters they had written and guessed who had written them. We e-mailed the letters to friends from Switzerland, with the promise that we will send the proper letters once the emergency measures in the country are lifted.
On Sunday, 10 May 2020, we are preparing a special online tea party called “I have talent”, where schoolchildren will have the task of presenting their talent in a short form of up to 2 minutes on Zoom. During May, we will continue with the implementation of online activities until all the necessary conditions for the safe organisation of workshops and training with the youth in Bujanovac are met.
Special thanks to our trainers who have designed great ideas for working online with youth, Sanja Stamenković and Jelena Ranđelović, as well as our interpreters during the workshops, Fidan Fejzulli and Fatos Mustafa.
