The Hastor Foundation plays a great role in the life of all its scholarship recipients, both current and former. It motivates them to never give up on their goals and to always move forward, striving to be better. The Foundation is often the greatest, and sometimes the only support in the life of its scholarship recipients. Former scholarship recipients often, full of memories, remember different moments in life when they needed someone who would unconditionally believe in them. They proudly point out that in those very moments of their lives, The Hastor Foundation provided with a helping hand. It was our former scholarship recipient, Esma Husika Fazlić, that the Hastor Foundation was a helping hand in a crucial period of her life when she needed someone who would believe in her, support her and help her get closer to realizing her dreams.
Esma Husika Fazlić comes from Kakanj, where she completed primary and secondary school. She studied in the Faculty of Philosophy–Sarajevo, Anglistics department. Her volunteering engagement in The Hastor Foundation was ongoing for four years, when she could participate in training for interns, organized by the Hastor Foundation, which took her a step further and she got the chance to volunteer at Al Jazeera Balkans in 2012. After a year of volunteer engagement, she was hired at Al Jazeera, where she still works as an English translator for more than a decade. That job requires vigilance, and readiness to always research for new topics. That presented no challenge to Esma because she always looked up to her older student recipients in The Hastor foundation, who were always focused and ready for new challenges. Besides that, Esma volunteered as a mentor for a primary school student recipients.
As the Hastor Foundation is based on altruism and strives to transfer this to the scholarship holders, Esma, through her mentorship, selflessly transferred knowledge of the English language and other teaching subjects to the younger scholarship recipients. Further on, The Hastor Foundation recognised her potential, and she had a chance to volunteer in the administrative and editorial team, where she could show her skills and where she could work on further development of those skills. Because of a rich volunteer involvement most beautiful memories tie her only to The Hastor Foundation, and as a special memory she singles out a trip to the Netherlands, where she traveled as a guide for students who spent three weeks in the Netherlands. Since those are younger children, to the many of them this was the first longer trip without parents. Guides were at the same time the translators and the replacement for the parents. In Netherlands Esma gained new acquaintances, and some of them grew into friendships that last to this day, so she also met her best friend at The Hastor Foundation. Her friendship bound is strong even today, and they hope their children will continue that friendship. Esma proudly tells her son now about The Hastor Foundation, with the desire to awaken in him the gratitude she feels because it was the Hastor Foundation that opened the door to the business world for Esma, and because of that she can provide a lot for him today, but also teach him altruism and pass on positive values to him from an early age.
I can say that the Hastor Foundation meant two things to me: support and a springboard to success. They supported me financially in the moments when it was needed the most, and it was the path to my own finances and professional experience of enormous importance. I point out proudly that I was a scholarship recipient of The Hastor foundation and I inform people about it, from which many of them didn’t hear about it. People are moving in some kind of their own micro circles, unaware of the great good that the army of young, hardworking and clever people is doing for this country. I am proud that I myself was in one period of my life a part of that hardworking army.
Another important segment in her volunteer work was the monthly meetings, which turned into dynamic discussions and agreements regarding various matters and problems she faced in her work. That meant a lot to her, because thanks to the meetings she felt a big support of the older scholarship recipients, but she also provided support to the younger scholarship recipients. She points out that through volunteer work she developed empathy, but also gained an important business skills that were of a great importance for her later work. Therefore, she sends a message to young people: to be persistent, persevering and to always do their best. Only then they can make their dreams come true.
Don’t give up on your dreams, don’t give up on your obligations as well. Everything that you learn today will make your life easier tomorrow and open the way to new opportunities that you may only dream about now, and they are right there, just a step away from you. That step is called healthy work habits. I don’t believe that work made a human, but i believe that it shapes a human into a person who contributes and is worth something. Virtues such as responsibility, diligence, persistence, which the Hastor Foundation ultimately teaches us, are a universal language that will turn your dreams into reality.
