Our Scholars brushed-up their soft skills on Summer School in Stolac

Our scholars Ivana Čulić, Nevena Kisin, Edin Omerović and Andrej Perković had the opportunity to attend the First International Summer School “Empowering Personal Growth” organized by Swiss NGOs, i-Dijaspora Association and La Terra Nostra in cooperation with our Foundation that took place in Stolac from 21st until 27th of July. This is the first summer school ever that aims at increasing the connections between, the youth of our country on the one hand and, the youth of our diaspora and second generation migrants on the other hand, above all on a human level, while also facilitating personal growth.

Just imagine it: a lovely little town that looks so beautiful and fairy-tale like as if it was a medieval-style amusement park, located in the mesmerizing landscape of Herzegovina, the smell of sea and Mediterranean flora in the air and a shallow but turbulent and cold river fighting its way through bridges, buildings and stone. That is Stolac! All four of our students fell instantly in love with the place. It was this scenery that was the perfect location for a summer school that had such an immense and challenging goals - to make the participants more accepting and caring towards themselves and towards others. It was rather challenging but very rewarding for our students to set aside for a moment all the order, strictness, accuracy and precision of the technical world and open up themselves towards creativity, spontaneity and emotions.

The School kicked off with Design Thinking workshops, moved to Public speaking and Modern entrepreneurship workshops, where participants learned mainly about the ways of managing professional development while working for a start-up. For one entire day, the participants had Improvisational theatre workshops, i.e. games, that were aimed at increasing self-esteem, improving communication skills and coping with failure and were really fun. They covered the topic of civil engagement, increasing the awareness of active citizenship and even tried their hand in writing poetry and prose. Also, one day was devoted to an excursion, where they travelled to important historic places in Herzegovina - Medieval Ottoman town of Počitelj, necropolis Radimlja, Orthodox Christian monastery Žitomislić and the city of Mostar, while also having periodic reflections during the day.

The entire experience was an incredible journey, thus our scholars did not hide their happiness and excitedness.

“Being born and raised in a relatively small city, I never had a chance to meet a lot of new people from different places all around the world. Taking part in this great project, I had the opportunity to meet new people and learn new things. I met and connected with a lot of people with Bosnian roots that live in Western Europe and also the people that are born and raised there. Besides social part of this Summer School, I also enjoyed the educational part. I improved my self-confidence and public speaking through workshops. For me, it was really important because those are the skills that I use on a daily basis. The location of workshops was a perfect decision. Stolac is a beautiful city with great history and places to visit. I really hope that I can be a part of Summer School and enjoy this beautiful experience once again” – said Edin Omerović.

On the other side, Nevena Kisin said the following:

“I am so glad that I had opportunity to be a part of the project. It left me so enriched and inspired. We learned a lot about how to improve ourselves, our self-confidence and public speaking skills, which I find very important for every young person who wants to be the best in areas of his or her interest. I met many amazing people from different parts of Europe, who share the same interest in developing this country and themselves further. Also, I really like the location where the workshops were held - Stolac is such a beautiful and peaceful place, thus I can't wait to visit it again. Finally, Bosnia ad Herzegovina is becoming a place where people from other countries are coming to get educated”.

We are very proud of our scholars and congratulate them for being active members of our Foundation and recognizing the importance of soft skills for their engineering mission