PH International

"Stairway to heaven"

Bosnia and Herzegovina | Bosnia Legal Socialization Program | 4 Dec 2017


Success
This is a story about students, about learning and about making a positive change in one’s community. The students are from primary school “Ćamil Sijarić” from Nemila, one of 16 primary schools in two cantons: Zenica-Doboj and Herzegovina-Neretva. These 16 schools were selected by their respective cantonal ministers of education to take a part in the Legal socialization and juvenile crime prevention Program in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BLSP).The BLSP is implemented by PH international and funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL).

Overview
The story emerged from activities related to the Summer Camps implemented within the BLSP. The main goal of the Summer Camps was to train participants (students and teachers/mentors) in how to use social media for leadership in social activism through practical examples, how to use social media for social action, and how to use social media safely and for socially good purposes.
The Summer Camps were organized and implemented in September 2017 for all 16 primary schools from both cantons selected to participate in the BLSP. Each school nominated five students and one teacher-mentor to take part in these two, three-day social media training camps.
Following the Summer Camps, BLSP staff announced a public call for participating primary schools to take a part in a competition that would select and reward the best eight (8) project proposals. The call was open from October 13 – 31, 2017.
The main purpose of the public call was to encourage knowledge sharing between students who participated in the Summer Camps and their school peers who did not participate in the Summer Camps. By developing project proposals and subsequently producing a piece of multimedia work, students were expected to improve their skills in:
 - Leadership by encouraging youth to have a greater interest in the rule of law, legal socialization and the prevention of juvenile delinquency;
 - Promoting positive patterns and models of behavior;
 - Responsibly handling the internet and other social media tools.

One of the 8 award winning applications is a nine minute video “Stairway to Heaven”. The video is produced by 15 students from primary School “Ćamil Sijarić” and their teacher-mentor. The video is a short documentary about a student with special needs and how he goes about his daily life in ‘an unfriendly’ school building. His thoughts and wishes are quite simple and ordinary, yet unfulfilled, until his schoolmates came back from the BLSP Summer Camp where they had learned about positive patterns and models of behavior. The video captures a message about the need to observe daily community life, to recognize problems and to act. Not only was the “Stairway to Heaven” video selected as the top video in the BLSP competition, it also received the top prize as the best documentary movie at the 19th Children and Youth Festival in Zenica held December 8-9, 2017.

Please see the video “Stairway to Heaven” with English subtitles, provided by BLSP at:
https://youtu.be/7pVfrTKGENw