| SARAJEVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA |
Primary school "Džemaludin Čaušević"     Among the guests from all the continents, attending the first awarding ceremony of the competition for young people's art, only a year after the founding of the Gallery of Children's Art Works in 2000, there was also a small delegation from the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. After a long journey by car, over 500 kilometres, the guests from Primary School "Džemaludin Čaušević" were exhausted, but happy. They were among friends again, after a long period of hard time during the war in their beloved Sarajevo. They were again able to leave the city in order to receive the awards, and safely come back. Five years later, during the stay in Sarajevo, the author of these lines had an opportunity to shake hands with the headmistress of the school, Mrs Haša Albinović, who has made many changes at the school. With a lot of effort and the help of other teachers she managed to include over 70 Romany children into the school, therefore they were awarded the title "The Model School". She introduced modern educational methods and created a positive atmosphere for almost 700 members of this institution. I gladly accepted an invitation to visit the class, that years ago, according to the jury, sent the best collection of drawings on the theme Still life. At the end I was given a book of photographs about the war in Sarajevo "My Sarajevo 1992 - 1997", about the horrors of the war that should never happen again, nowhere in the world. They also gave me a copy of their school magazine called "Haber" (The Word), where I could read that a student called Adina Kaljanac was a prize winner of the contest by The World of Art magazine. The school subscribed to the magazine for 2007, and we arranged a series of exhibitions of awarded art from our competitions in Sarajevo in 2008. Sarajevo accepted me with open heart and I will always be happy to return there. Thank you, Sarajevo. |
