On Saturday, March 16, another monthly gathering of students – scholarship holders of the Hastor Foundation was held in the large hall of ASA Prevent group.
The imprint which the Hastor Foundation leaves on the young, nowadays successful people, is also shown by the fact that some of the former scholarship holders expressed the desire to, in a way, recall the days when they were in the position of students, and to attend this meeting.
This time, they were Armina Đugum, PhD, and Semir Hajdar, a fifth-year student of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Sarajevo and current ASA Bank employee. In their address to the students, they emphasized how much, from today’s perspective, they are aware of the opportunity, but also of the impact of the Hastor Foundation on the development of their personalities, and the creation of their life paths, as well as their business paths. They advised the students to make use of their privilege in the best way possible, and to appreciate everything that they acquire through volunteerism within the Foundation, since they will certainly use it in the future, regardless of their jobs. As it has been a common practice within the Foundation for many years, the meeting is regularly attended by students from different parts of BiH, and the very concept of the March meeting was designed precisely so that the students were divided into groups in which they are not familiar with one another.
The focus of the meeting was on the activities integrated in the framework of “team building”, and the aim of this concept was oriented towards the understanding of how students deal with hypothetical situations in which they are “forced” to work together with a team of people they do not know. The goal was for scholarship holders from different parts of BiH, but also from different fields of formal education, and therefore different chosen business paths, to get acquainted with one another. The final aim was for the students to, through the specific tasks they received for their groups, come to a certain comprehension that the synergy of different specific knowledge, abilities, affinities, and even character traits, can effectively solve every problem that lies ahead of them.
It is necessary to look at every diversity as a source of immense fortune, and if we think and dig just a little deeper below the surface, we will very soon come to the conclusion that one of the foundations of the activity and the continuous growth of the number of the members of the Hastor Foundation are precisely the result of the integration of people with different knowledge, personalities and skills. Great and meaningful things are never a product of just one individual. Behind them, there are always dedicated groups of people who work together, learn from each other and therefore succeed in prospering, gathered around a common idea. It is of utmost importance that the students themselves become aware of this, and that they value each other’s differences, but also gain knowledge from direct interaction with their colleagues. The activities assigned to each group of students were predominantly fun, and the scholarship holders had the opportunity to laugh and be creative, but also learn a lot about each other, try to read body language, recall important dates from their lives, conduct a potential job interview, while some of them found themselves in the role of marketing managers. In the end, the meeting was completely successfully conducted, and some students took the opportunity to stand out with their own particular creativity, communication skills, resourcefulness, and the powers of persuasion.
Amina Vatreš
