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Fighting Bullying in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Merima Muhic Yes 2016 Bosnia And Herzegovina Placed By Aces In Apex North Carolina 5

By Merima Muhic, YES 2015-2016, Bosnia and Herzegovina, hosted by ACES in Apex, NC

My name is Merima Muhic, from Zivinice, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I was an exchange student in 2015-2016. I was placed in Apex, North Carolina, where I attended the local high school. While in the U.S., I was inspired by how much my high school worked on bringing everyone together, as well as by how my own counselor actively held meetings with students to make sure they felt welcomed and safe at school. After I came back from the U.S., I started working on projects, eventually became a volunteer City Representative for YES alumni.

Then a bullying incident happened in my high school. It showed me how much of a problem bullying is and that it’s happening right in front of my eyes. I decided it was time to plan an anti-bullying workshop. At first I wanted it to be pretty basic: a workshop for ten people. Then, I decided that there is no point in doing something if it's not going to make noise, so I reached out to another City Representative, Pavle Lakic (YES ’12), to get help on this project.

Merima Muhic Yes 2016 Bosnia And Herzegovina Placed By Aces In Apex North Carolina 3

Twenty high school students of all ages and backgrounds participated in the workshop, which took place on February 2, 2017. We created a safe space for everyone to speak and made it a conversational workshop, rather than having us do all of the talking. The presentation that was included in the workshop consisted of actual information and evidence about how bullying has been taking schools by storm, and highlighted the fact that our society isn’t doing a whole lot to promote anti-bullying and diversity policies. During the presentation, I played a video that was based on a real-life event, where an innocent life was lost due to constant bullying at school. It was obvious how much it affected every single person in the room; whether they were victims of bullying or bullies themselves.

Merima Muhic Yes 2016 Bosnia And Herzegovina Placed By Aces In Apex North Carolina 4

I wanted to expand the reach of this project so I made flyers with data on how many children are bullied, both in Bosnia and Herzegovina and around the world, and how little is being done to help them. The participants of the workshop helped me pass out these flyers and purple balloons (connecting the color purple to the purple ribbon for anti-bullying) to people on the streets.

Merima Muhic Yes 2016 Bosnia And Herzegovina Placed By Aces In Apex North Carolina 1

When I started planning this project, I hoped to reach out to at least 10 people and help at least one victim of bullying. I certainly didn’t expect that the story of our workshop would reach the local TV station and other high schools. I was happily surprised when other students started stopping me in the hallways to ask me when they could attend a workshop like this one. I already have two more workshops to do at other high schools, and I am working with the Alumni Coordinator for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Davor Tunjic (YES ‘13), on a proposal for making a short movie about bullying/anti-bullying and the workshop that started it all.


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