Center for Children Zaječar in partnership with Status M, CARE’s partner organization, organized the Erasmus+ project “I can say – it’s not OK” from 29 July to 5 August 2018.
The project is organized with the aim of familiarizing young people with the problem, everyday examples and the spread of corruption, and the possibilities of finding common ways to fight corruption. Two groups of young people participated in the project: one from Serbia and one from Croatia. Each group consisted of eight girls and eight boys of high school age and each team was followed by four adult leaders. The Croatian group of boys and girls was made up of members of BMC Kuršanec.
In the morning hours of Saturday, 28 July 2018, we headed towards Donji Milanovac. Donji Milanovac is a small town in the eastern Serbia situated on the Danube bank, right next to the border with Romania and the National Park Djerdap. Introducing the participants began on the first day when we started together on a boat trip through the Djerdap Gorge.
We spent the following days in the workshops and activities that were alternately performed by the participants and leaders. First, we started with the workshops and activities of mutual acquaintance and workshops that served to introduce us to the topic of corruption.
The workshops in which we participated and which we performed were heterogeneous. Through the workshops we dealt with examples of corruption and corruptive behavior, the recognition of values in society through the texts of popular songs, the ways in which corruption enters into everyday life and the ways in which it is manifested in all spheres of society. The participants tried to form the government during one day; during the second day they prepared scenarios for a forum theater with the examples of corruption. All this was done with the socializing between the participants from Serbia and Croatia and in their mutual cooperation.
When we were not in the workshops, we spent time socializing with each other in the hostel Trajan or on a beach on the Danube river by observing the rescuers. We often used leisure time in the hostel for the preparation of scenarios for the promotional videos of the project, which were aimed at showing what the participants learned about at the project and spreading awareness of corruption among young people.
We had the opportunity to get to know the local attractions on the excursions that were organized. In addition to the already mentioned boat ride through the Đerdap Gorge, a trip to Rajko’s Cave was organized where we had a presentation of the traditional way of extracting gold from the river and we visited the famous archaeological site Lepenski Vir.
The last evening of the project participants participated in a local competition in preparing a fish soup where they won the third place prize and the award for the most cheerful team.
In spite of the initial shyness, on 5 August the project ended not only with a lot of work done and a lot of gained knowledge about the corruption and ways to fight it, but also with a lot of new friendships and a strong desire to continue the cooperation.
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