The Hastor Foundation is rich in ambitious, experienced, and daring young individuals who showcase their skills through the role of mentors. The monthly meetings they have is the opportunity to serve as an excellent platform for developing diverse skills, acquiring new knowledge and experience, and, perhaps most importantly, providing them with the chance to positively influence the scholarship recipients they mentor in their voluntary meetings. The goal of our column ”Small Stories of Great Volunteers” is to bring creative, inspiring, and astonishing stories from volunteering in the field. This month, we give you the opportunity to read the story of Maja Bojanić and her volunteer group. We also hope that this text will motivate you to do something that will truly fulfill you this month.
Maja Bojanić comes from Derventa and is a first-year student at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Banja Luka, majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science. Maja learned about the Hastor Foundation at the end of the ninth grade of elementary school, and at the beginning of her high school education, she became a scholarship recipient.
The Foundation has had a significant impact on my progress, and the most significant change I see is in my attitude towards community contribution and volunteering, emphasizes Maja as she recalls her beginnings.
What is specific about Maja’s story is that she currently volunteers as a mentor to a third-year high school student in Derventa. In addition, she is a member of the Club for Technical Sciences, where she provides instructive lessons to students in need. Considering that this is her first year as a mentor, she notes that she has gained excellent experience and new acquaintances, but also learned to be more resourceful and creative. Both Maja and the scholarship recipient she volunteers with come from Derventa, a small town with not many opportunities for community volunteering. However, the two of them always manage to carry out some nice and useful activities together. Maja mentions that it’s quite unusual to work with only one scholarship recipient, but she certainly tries to prepare the meetings just as she would if she had more students.
This month, Maja and her student spent their volunteering hours in the local community in a kindergarten in their town. Our mentor planned all of this with a special intention. Namely, the scholarship recipient she works with expressed an interest in enrolling in the Faculty of Preschool Education, so Maja decided to give her the opportunity to explore her desires and thoughts more deeply through this volunteering. Upon arrival at the kindergarten, they were assigned two older groups of children, aged 4 to 5 years.
Maja was in one group, and the scholarship holder, Erna, was in another. Together with the kindergarten children, they made New Year’s decorations. Maja and Erna made sure to prepare everything needed for the decorations in advance and started crafting upon arrival. After that, they played with the children and tried to get to know what it’s like to be a kindergarten teacher. At the end of their volunteering, they also helped prepare the children for nap time and left the kindergarten with wide smiles.
By volunteering in the community, we observe many benefits for both mentors and their students. Volunteering at the Hastor Foundation has a significant impact on each mentor because it teaches us to pass on our knowledge to others, to strive to be role models for them, and to be the best version of ourselves, says our mentor. Maja stated that thanks to volunteer activities, all scholarship recipient students have the opportunity to learn from their mentors, participate in volunteering by expressing their own opinions, and build themselves up day by day. Community volunteering encourages students to be a better version of themselves in the future, not to be afraid to help others, and to understand that good deeds always come back. The extent to which the Hastor Foundation and its mentors encourage the importance of volunteering can be seen through Maja’s example, as she emphasizes that through mentoring at the Foundation, she strengthens her self-confidence and awakens a desire for more active volunteering in her.
Finally, Maja had a message she wanted to convey to all current and future scholarship recipients of the Hastor Foundation:
You are in the right place, take advantage of all the opportunities the Foundation provides you, and use your volunteer hours to improve yourself, raise your level of self-confidence, and maybe, one day, pass all of this on to new scholarship recipients.
Prepared by: Aida Suljić
