COVID-19 cannot stop education in Bosnia and Herzegovina! — Bosnia & Herzegovina Futures Foundation

Schools and universities in our country had to relocate their educational activities to digital classrooms in March due to the COVID 19 outbreak. It also affected all our planned public events and activities, and we had to postpone them. However, coronavirus did not stop us to be active within the field of science and education. Therefore, we have taken action and continued to create positive stories, even while being in quarantine, because we did not let coronavirus to stop the education.

Since universities and schools suddenly had to face the challenge of online education, we decided to jump in and give them additional support for overcoming all obstacles. In the spirit of giving back and helping, the Foundation successfully activated and used all of its resources to assist teachers, students, and parents in Bosnia & Herzegovina with online distance learning.

One of our first activities was a series of online education webinars on how to use different tools for online teaching and learning. These webinars were mainly intended for teachers and according to positive feedback and a huge number of interested teachers, we did a great job. At the same time, we also provided personalized and private support lessons to any teacher/student/parent who wanted to learn how to run or participate in online classes.

We are extremely proud that our scholars, volunteers, and board members, together with external educators got involved into our online tutoring program offering hundreds of hours of their time for helping students anywhere in Bosnia & Herzegovina, not only with STEM topics but also covering other subjects such as local and foreign languages.

Now, when the school year is over, it is time to reflect on what we have achieved so far in these 4 months. Statistical data show that, including our scholars and external educators, more than 65 people shared their knowledge as tutors; more than 450 students participated in online lessons, out of which 175 were elementary school students and 275 were high school attendees, from more than 100 schools all across Bosnia and Herzegovina. All these students were divided into more than 160 groups. The majority of them were groups for mathematics (55), physics (36), and English language (20) tutoring. Zoom, Skype, Hangouts, and Viber were the tools used by educators for online tutoring sessions, that were conducted two times per week on average.

After we read the feedback messages from participants, our heart jumped a beat. Here are just some of them:

- With the help of a tutor, I learn and understand the material, since we only get lessons and tasks from the course teacher, that we have to work out by ourselves.
- I am very delighted. The tutor’s explanations are great, and I feel like I really make progress in math.
- Whenever I needed help, my tutor was there to help me and thus I am incredibly happy. I do not think I would have made this progress without these extra online classes.
- I am happy to be a part of this and maybe one day, when I grow up, I get an opportunity to be a teacher to help students with their lessons.
- It's interesting and helps me a lot. With tutoring, I understand the lessons much better. - All praise for the idea, realizatdion, and engagement of your activists. I wish you all the best!

We use this opportunity to honestly express our gratitude to all volunteers and educators who invested their own time and knowledge into this project. Without you, this would not be possible. We are very happy to find out that we really can count on you when necessary, especially in these hard times of pandemic. Last but not the least, a big thank you goes also to all students, teachers, and parents who had trust in us and our online tutoring program!