Volunteering is a special aspect of human activity. Through this process, we express our humanity and empathy, show our willingness to work, help others, and that’s way we build our community. Scholarship holders of the Hastor Foundation do this in a special way within the framework of a system that has proven to be very successful throughout all these years of the Foundation’s existence. Every month, one of the scholarship holders is included among the best with his work, and this month it is our scholarship holder Džejla Alibašić.
Džejla comes from Sarajevo. She is currently a student at the Faculty of Economics, University of Sarajevo, Department of Management, majoring in Business Analytics. She is in her third year of studies and has been a Foundation scholarship holder for six years. Džejla has been interested in economics since high school, so the Faculty of Economics was a completely logical choice for her.
When it comes to her volunteer engagement within the Hastor Foundation, Džejla had the opportunity to socialize with her mentors as a student, and later she took on the role of a mentor herself and continued to apply all the positive values she acquired as a student. Having become a mentor to younger scholarship holders, Džejla had many wonderful experiences, and she singles out mentoring a group of high school students who attended the School of Economics as the most special one. She points out that she had the opportunity to exchange opinions with them because they could often talk about what Džejla is studying and what the students are learning in high school. Their meetings were very rich and meaningful because they covered various topics and visited cultural institutions and many other places that Džejla as their mentor, thought they had to see and get to know.
Together with the other mentors, Džejla tried to bring animation and positive energy into every meeting. Although she volunteered as a mentor to younger scholarship holders for a very short time, Džejla used that time to make creative content and work in various ways to educate and expand her students’ horizons.
She continued her volunteer work as a member of the monitoring team. She says that this period was very demanding, since the task of the members of this team is to monitor the effectiveness of meetings with younger scholarship holders and to help the mentors in their implementation. But, as she states, Džejla enjoyed watching the content that the mentors created for their groups, so she stayed at some meetings until the very end.
In addition to the already mentioned types of volunteering at the Foundation, Džejla had the desire and ambition to expand her knowledge and experience and became a member of the administrative team in the second year of her studies and is still there today. The administrative team of the Hastor Foundation is one of the most important teams whose members perform various and responsible tasks, and among them, regulation of work on the application, checking of announcements and reports received from scholarship holders volunteering in the field, and review of their annual plans and programs. They also communicate with current scholarship holders, their parents and a large number of candidates who are interested in our scholarship. Through volunteering in the administrative team, she learned a lot, made many acquaintances and, as she points out, became more responsible due to the seriousness of the tasks she performs. As a member of the administration who volunteers in the office, she gained freedom and good communication skills due to the already mentioned activities that this type of volunteer work at the Hastor Foundation entails. Precisely because of all the above, Džejla says that this type of volunteering is extremely important, since the Foundation has a large number of scholarship holders, but also interesting, considering the variety of tasks she performed. She points out that it is her pleasure to work with other members of the administration and help scholarship holders and their parents to solve their dilemmas and fulfil their obligations in the best possible way. She approaches tasks very seriously and is very happy to share her opinions with other colleagues, which is also one of the main determinants of the Foundation – getting to know others, getting to know yourself.
The Foundation helped me to build self-confidence, gain new acquaintances, but also to gain different and useful experiences. I also met my best friend at the Foundation, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who found special people in this environment who are always ready to help and support each other. It’s nice to know that you have support for your whole life in someone, I found such support in the Hastor Foundation and I am grateful for everything it has given me so far.
The opportunity to move forward, meet different people and perform different tasks is the best thing that the Foundation provides to its members, and she sees the results through their growth into mature and self-aware individuals ready to work on themselves and help the people around them, therefore she says to all other scholarship holders:
Build your dreams boldly and courageously step towards their realization. Every new experience is also a life lesson from which you learn a lot for the future, and every new obstacle is just an opportunity to strengthen your will and desire for the success you are aiming for. And finally, be happy that you have the support of a community such as the Hastor Foundation, as I do myself.
Prepared by: Fatima Gazić
Translated by: Semra Islamović
