Safe haven, reliance and support

Volunteers of the Older Brother, Older Sister Foundation actively campaigned on the Grow, World, in(to) a Happy Child! campaign and some of them managed in a double role. Today with us is Amila Ibrahimović, an older sister and member of the Fundraising Family team. Besides volunteering activities, Amila also regularly passes her exams in the fourth year at the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo.

How and why did you enroll to volunteer for the Older Brother, Older Sister project?
Having been an active member of the association for Addiction Prevention NARKO-NE for over some five years, the period in which I was part of various projects (first throughout secondary school education and later on throughout university) and having always explored the new and different, I found myself in the project when chatting with a close friend, who was also an older sister several years ago, and I wanted to see in what way I could contribute to the life of one child.
Honestly, with me being in this type of project for the first time, I have always been thinking of my ability to fulfill, not just expectations of the project, but expectations of a younger brother or sister as well. Because of that, I was gathering information from other volunteers (both current and former ones), questioning in that way my decision to enroll. After an interview, training for volunteers followed, which explained the project to us in great detail. They presentedthe picture of how the project really looked like to us, what was expected from us as an older brother or sister and, also what challenges we could encounter and what situations we could expect during meetings with our younger friends.

How did the first meeting with your younger brother look like?

The first meeting itself is something I will undoubtedly remember my whole life. Given the fact that the boy was already familiar with the project, because his older brother has already been part of it, he could not wait to get an older sister, and it was immediately evident on his face how happy and excited he was because of our meeting.
I was expecting a small and scared boy, a boy who was shy and confused because he was meeting a girl he will be spending time with and who he has never met before. However, to my great joy, he showed the wish for socializing and discovering new things with me from the very beginning, which, of course, was a true enjoyment and satisfaction to me.

How do your meetings look like? Could you describe some interesting parts of them?

Thanks to his interest in our meetings, he would prepare a new interesting suggestion each time we met after which we would make a plan how he would spend his pocket money, and then we would go. In the first few meetings, he could not accept the fact that we could not visit places in which video games were played, and he persistently insisted that we visit such places. I explained to him why we could not do that,and after that, he quickly found some other interesting activities for our meetings: walking through a park, visiting museums, going to the cinema, playing board games, coloring and reading coloring books, going out and having pancakes...

After an exhausting day, my last responsibility was to walk him home and tell his mother that everything went perfectly fine.
Also, one of the interesting but a bit concerning things that happened to us each time was that he consistently forgot that he has to carefully look around himself when he intends to cross the road over to the other side. Of course, I turned his attention to it every time, but he simply was not focused sometimes, and that truly concerned me. Because of that, I had to explain to him several times the importance of road safety each time we met.

One of the positive things that happened to us in one of our meetings was indeed him overcoming his fear of escalators. His fear could reallybe seen, but whatalso could be seen was his wish to overcome his fear, and he was readyto start over again and again each time. On one of our meetings he succeeded. The decision itself to overcome his fear, to overcome it with me as his older sister, made me truly joyful and made me even more proud because I saw how much he trusted me and how much he enjoyed my company... And what more did I need?

How did you manage in the role of older sister, and what that means to you?

To me, the role of older sister was significantly less demanding, particularly because I was lucky to be an older sister to such a boy who, before anything else, really saw in me a confidante, someone who will not judge him; someone who will point out to him, in a different and to him more acceptable way, something that is not right; someone who will show him that one can learn about various life things in engaging ways.

Thanks to this project, I fulfilled my wish being to one boy both support through one of the periods of his life and a person he can count on without fearing any judgment and the most important thing: I was his true friend. I enjoyed returning to those careless childhood days, playing and coming up, time and time again, with ways to make those moments we spent together even more interesting.

What would you say to young people, potential volunteers?

Volunteering on the Older Brother, Older Sister project gives a true feeling of satisfaction, peaceful mind, endless love and, above all, positive energy. I am sure that all of you are in need of positive energy, and that is why I warmly recommend that you spend your free time in the best way possible.

Be a safe haven, be someone reliable and supportive!

Be an older brother or older sister.

By Ivana Radić