Sarajevo (22-24 May)

Belgrade, head to Sarajevo!

At dawn on 22 May we set off for Sarajevo, a city bordered by the Miljacka River. We contacted Caritas Switzerland the same day and attended a meeting with the Caritas Director, the Refugee Coordinator and a young volunteer from Germany who has been helping them for a year.

The next morning we met again with the aid workers and visited the "safe house", a unique institution that exclusively hosts refugee children who arrive without parents. This facility is designed to accommodate 20 children for up to a longer period of time. At the time of our visit, seven children were accommodated and seven more were expected to arrive that very afternoon. They are looked after by the "legal guardians" there, who also provide them with education after they have been issued with their legal papers.

During our visit, we were impressed by the commitment of the organisation and the care they provide to the children. The "safe house" is a real refuge where children can feel safe, have the opportunity to work through trauma (including with the help of a psychologist) and receive age-appropriate education. The volunteers and staff there have an extraordinary patience and love for the children, which has been very touching and inspiring for us.

Afterwards, we went to Usivak with the aid workers, which is located in a beautiful setting on the outskirts of Sarajevo.

The refugee shelter here can accommodate up to 1000 people. The camp includes a community kitchen, a barber shop and a health base where twice a week a specialist psychologist provides mental health care to those in need.

For young people there is an indoor play room and an outdoor sports area. It was fun to watch the young people playing volleyball together.

Most volunteers come here for a year from all over Europe. In our experience, most of them come from Italy.

This greatly helps the day-to-day running of the camp, but if local volunteers were involved, the work in the refugee camp would be even smoother, as the integration of refugees could be helped even more effectively by the locals.

Several refugee organisations are active in the camp, including IOM. These organisations, with a few people specialised in different refugee issues, try to make life easier for refugees and help them to integrate and move on.

We hope to be back soon and to have many more experiences.