We Do Adventure

Our banner image used to proudly declare "blogging from Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2008". These days that would be a false claim. We have been in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2008, all the time working as volunteer youth workers with Novi Most , but the blogs stopped a few years back. After what was an undoubtedly inadvisable absence online we started a weekly vlog back in July last year. Over the last eight months these have highlighted different aspects of our work, as well as giving a glimpse into the travels that accompany it. They are all neatly arranged in this playlist below. We hope you enjoy them. You'll find a new video every Sunday on our YouTube channel .

Tonight we are officially at the end of our Novi Most summer activities for another year. We had a parents evening to finish things off, giving them a chance to see what their young people had been up to over the last two months. We crammed a bunch of activities into a short video to tell the story, although there was plenty of good stuff that didn't make the cut. It's been another summer where we've seen lots of young people get the opportunity to try new things and have some great some great experiences they probably wouldn't have got on their own. For us it's encouraging to know we have happy parents of the happy young people we've been working with. As we said to them this evening, now we have a bit of a break and we start to think what's going to make this winter special when our activities start up again in October.

By now friends and followers of this blog who like the Novi Most Facebook page will be well aware that the organisation is making the most of the opportunity afforded by social media to get the word out. This is important. We who are involved in the work know it's needed, and appreciated, work that's making a difference. However we also know that if we don't explain that whats and the whys of it the details can be hard to second guess from the other side of Europe, less so from even father afield. That's the idea behind the series of short videos Novi Most is releasing: concise presentations of the issues affecting young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina and what Novi Most is doing in response. Having worked on putting these, and the accompanying photos, together it's good to seem them being shared and commented on online. Social media provides a great opportunity to share a story at the click of a button. We want to make the most of this opportunity. But we are al...

Here is the evidence I went out riding today. It's not that I think you wouldn't believe me without the image - I could have blogged about the ride without it – but a pictures ability to add to the word count without adding any words is the stuff of legends. From what I gather from Facebook it seems some UK readers may be sick of the sight of snow, and to them I apologise, but it was the dusting of overnight snow that got me out of the house this morning. I wanted to ride in the snow a couple of weeks back but we had too much work on for me to find the time. Today gave the perfect combination: a sunny day and enough snow to make it a snow ride, without too much to render riding an impossibility. Yesterday we met an American who had worked in Jajce at the end of the nineties. They were excited to here about the developing youth work project we are part of. The word pioneering cropped up in the conversation. I'll confess it's not a tag that sits easily because I'...

After being involved in youth work for more than fifteen years you've heard lots of reasons, and occasionally excuses, as to why people didn't show up when you were expecting them too. Today I heard one I'd never heard before. Rowan and I used to do a lot of youth work out of a school youth centre in a rural part of Sussex. Even there this never cropped up. Jajce is more rural still, as this picture indicates. It was produced by one of the young people who did make it to our first Novi Most session in Jajce. He was one of almost twenty who responded to the invitation and came to see what opportunities could open up with Novi Most now working in the town. It was a very positive couple of hours. We'll run a similar introduction session next weekend for those unable to be there today. Some of them were at a school event happening in town, which is familiar territory; others, however, had to go to a village and slaughter some pigs, which is definitely a new one for me! In ...

I'm aware that over the past few weeks I've posted a number of photographs of the beautiful scenery here in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I'm also aware that we're here to work with people not to sit back and soak up the surroundings. And so today I offer this picture as some small way of redressing the balance. This is Budo (the other Novi Most team member with Rowan and me in Jajce) on Banja Luka's main shopping street. He's pointing a camera at me, Dina (who runs the uni hockey team I help out with in Jajce) and eleven young people who we'd taken to play against a club in Banja Luka this morning. Our team lost: 21-16 was the final score. They have previously done well in competitions so are unused to being on the wrong end of what, while not exactly a hammering, was certainly one of life's learning experiences. Other than the scoreline, though, it was a great day out.

Spring has sprung...at least that was the conclusion I had to draw when we turned up at Novi Most's youth centre in Mostar after this morning's uni-hockey practise session in a nearby school. The sun was out and so, it seemed, where most of our regulars. The patch of green (or more often brown) space in front of the Klub building was covered in young people wielding rakes and picking up litter. This was outdoor spring-cleaning in action; even the pavements were getting a wash and sweep! It's at this point I could pose the classic question: do you want the good news or the bad news? Naturally, it's a rhetorical question. So here's the bad news. Thanks to Mostar's strong winds and its inhabitants propensity to litter it will not be long before it looks like this morning never happened. But the good news is it did happen. I wasn't there but I'm certain the clean up was initiated by one of our local workers. Encouraging young people to all muck in with clean...

Before we went back to the UK for a visit in September we made this video to explain a little of what we've been up to over the last year and why we're back in Mostar for more...enjoy! (You Get The Story When You Go - we know we did, but what does it mean for you?)

I aware I don’t write too much about the work we’re involved in and so today’s post will do something to redress that balance – or imbalance, if you prefer! We are team leaders for Novi Most International, a Christian charitable organisation providing youth work in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Rowan and I are only too aware that when you mention youth work many people can’t see past labelling you as a teenager who never grew up; someone who prefers playing and hanging out to growing up and taking on the real world. Everybody’s entitled to an opinion but there’s a lot to be said for informal education, which is what good youth work will provide. Whether you take a snapshot of education in the UK or in BiH you won’t have to look hard to see that the formal education process only work for so many people. For others it just does do it for them. That’s why we hear of so many rules or coercions, threats or incentives deployed in the classroom. Some would tell you that part of the problem ...

Most days when I write I write and Rowan discovers what’s be posted the next time she’s online. Today, there was some discussion beforehand. We were in Klub and she was showing me some artwork produced by young people on Saturday. Four square canvasses were sat on the side. This one caught my eye. The young people who come to Klub come from a range of backgrounds. Some are in education and will end up in university. Others are involved in more vocational training. Some have had no education. We’re been providing opportunities for all of them to engage in a range of creative projects. It was not easy at first. From what we can work out, the sort of creative activities that would not be uncommon in UK youth work are very definitely foreign concepts here. Over the last few months it’s been encouraging to see more of them decide they want to take part. Which brings us to this art. It is mainly the work of a nineteen year old, who was helped out by a thirteen year old – the thirteen year ol...

The video pretty much tells the story. Faith Camp is Kingdom Faith's annual family camp; the Move is the youth work there, and has been for the last 15 years. I've worked every one of those years. But for the forseeable future this summer instituation will no longer be part of my life. Cue tears!