Drop-in centre for street involved children opened in Bijeljina

Drop-in centre for street involved children and children at risk is opened this week in Bijeljina. Association for Roma education promotion “Otaharin” from Bijeljina manages the centre with support from Save the Children and Bijeljina City Administration.

President of the Association “Otaharin” Dragan Joković warned on this occasion that Bijeljina has a large number of children involved in street begging.

“We are pointing out to this issue for years. We have established a working group for children safety, but we needed space such as this centre to be able to offer a shelter for children at least during the day and provide basic services for them – food, hygiene, place for play,” said Joković. “We ensured that highly skilled professionals are available to them and we hope to enable them to have a better future. Today we are celebrating our 10^th birthday, and this centre was one of our goals from the beginning.”

Drop-in centres provide support and protection services to street involved children and children at risk. In these centres children can get a warm meal, assistance to enrol to school and help with homework, assistance in realisation of their basic rights, along with the opportunity to have a quality leisure time.

“This is the eight drop-in centre for street involved children and children at risk that is being opened in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the fifth established with Save the Children support. Centre in Bijeljina is very important, namely, this city is close to the border between BiH, with high number of children often crossing the international border thus being especially vulnerable to various forms of abuse,” stated on this occasion Aida Bekić, Save the Children Child Protection Manager.

In the past years, drop-in centres in Sarajevo, Banjaluka and Mostar were established with support of Save the Children, while drop-in centre in Tuzla received support for successful functioning. Another drop-in centre for street involved children and children at risk is to be opened in Brčko in near future. The fact that similar services have been established in other parts of BiH by the local authorities or non-governmental organisations, based on examples of drop-in centres established by Save the Children, is very encouraging.