The rubric of active youth is a space where each month we present the most hard-working scholarship holders of our Hastor Foundation. In a small place, big and significant stories are written of those who use up every spare moment to do beautiful and useful things in an effort to make the society they live in better, more beautiful, and healthier. RAY is a rubric dedicated to those who work daily to improve their society and themselves. Therefore, we are delighted to talk about some of them. The rows of this month’s “Rubric of Active Youth” will be enriched with the story of Ajla Vrebo, a final-year student of the Faculty of Health Studies. Ajla decided to major in Laboratory Technologies, and her life story begins to intertwine with the Hastor Foundation already in the fifth grade of elementary school.
The Foundation plays a major role in Ajla’s life. Throughout the years of volunteering, she saw the Foundation as a guardian who was awarded to her by her teacher because she was a hard-working and exemplary child. That same guardian is still following her closely and gives her motivation. Ajla has always loved to learn, explore, and she never saw it as an obligation.
She was introduced to the term volunteer work after she had become part of the Hastor Foundation family, and since then, her volunteer biography has taken on many colors. Volunteer work became a daily part of her routine, so she joined various nongovernmental organizations, and one of them is the “Bravo” organization, where she is a member of the steering committee and project assistant.
When she was about to become a mentor, she was fearful of how well was she going to manage and if she would become a good-enough leader of a group. Still, with the help of her then-mentors, Ajla realized how much of a new experience each volunteering was and that it makes our lives more beautiful.
I have been volunteering at the Hastor Foundation since the fifth grade of elementary school. I will remember my first meetings for my mentor Belma, with whom I am still in contact today. I would single out that as the most beautiful part of every volunteer group I have been a member of over the past years. When I became a mentor myself, I knew what I wanted to achieve by doing so – to transfer as many positive experiences as possible to the group. Volunteering brought me numerous advantages, acquired new knowledge and skills. Every year, the Hastor Foundation instructs the mentors which topics should be the focus of the meetings, which is very good for the scholarship holders. Anything new you learn is always welcome and you never know when it might come in handy.
Furthermore, when you try your hand at the role of a mentor, you develop skills that, among other things, served me as a support for further development. I perceive all the volunteering and experiences I have gained as a puzzle that I put together in order to create a final picture that I will be satisfied with. Working with young people as a project assistant, I found the most inspiration. It helps me plan my next steps and create plans for the future. Thanks to volunteering at the Center for Healthy Aging, I realized how beautiful life can be, but also challenging. I think that by working with the elderly you can learn the most about life.
Ajla believes that it is very hard to balance university and private obligations with volunteer work. It often happens that some happenings exhaust her both physically and mentally, so those situations create additional challenges. However, with more obligations, she pushed her own boundaries which allowed her to develop her skills even further, but mostly to be able to work under pressure.
Sometimes throughout my college education, volunteering required a lot of time and energy, which often led to the question: Why do I volunteer so much?. When someone asks me why I am so active, I never know how to give an answer in one sentence, so I somehow try to explain it using examples.
Thanks to the volunteer work at the Hastor Foundation, I have learned how much influence we can have on others and why it is so important that young people have good role models.
Thanks to the Retirement home, I realized how beautiful life can be, but also challenging. I think that by working with the elderly you can learn the most about life. Working as a project assistant with the youth, I have found the greatest inspiration. That helps me to plan my next steps and create plans for the future. All of the volunteer work and experiences I have acquired I see as pieces of a puzzle that I am solving so that I can create the final picture I will be satisfied with.
Furthermore, what is a special advantage of volunteering at the Hastor Foundation is the fact that when you get student status, you have the option to join some of the teams such as administration, monitoring team, etc. As someone who is a member of the monitoring team, I must say that such a team gives a new perspective to the word volunteering and through it you are able to acquire numerous new skills.
Besides her parents, she considers the Foundation to be the biggest support throughout the entire period of schooling, because it helped her and her parents a lot financially, and so it strengthened the wind in her back.
Young people are certainly the initiators of change. The best example of this is precisely the Hastor Foundation. We have a structured system through which we can influence an individual from a very young age and in that way help in forming beliefs that can result in initiating changes in society. After all, to initiate change, we need a healthy society that will succeed in doing it, and the Hastor Foundation is doing exactly that – IT CREATES HEALTHY SOCIETY.
Ajla will continue her Master’s studies in Portugal as she was granted the Erasmus Mundus scholarship. She is looking forward the most to the libraries with which she had been fascinated since she was a child, and which she will soon have a chance to see in person. She says that the Erasmus scholarship is the realization of all of her dreams because she had been working hard the previous year so that she could continue her studies abroad and make her biggest dream come true.
Her message to the scholarship holders is:
We are moving through time too swiftly to be afraid of challenges and consequences, so set goals that will bring pleasure to you and follow them, because nothing is impossible.
Prepared by: Adelisa Begić
