The Bosnian Children’s Project

The MYF Bosnian Children’s Project has sadly come to the end of its life cycle. We have achieved all of the objectives that we set out to achieve when we started the BCP 15 years ago. Alhamdulillah all the children whom we helped initially in the refugee camps around the city of Tuzla and then in the villages of Josanica, Krizivici and Pobudje have now all grown up and are now making their own way in life.

Thank you very much and Jazak Allah to all the people who supported and donated to the MYF BCP over the course of the 15 years. Financial support was a critical pillar of the project without which the project could not have functioned. May Allah (swt) reward immensely, in this life and the hereafter, all those who have supported our project in the last 15 years.

The MYF BCP began in Ramadhan 2000 helping the children of the refugees who had fled from the genocide of the Bosnian Muslims in Eastern Bosnia, particularly from the town of Srebrenica. The project was operating in over 10 of the 20 refugee camps and included educational, cultural and religious support for the children. The project was greatly appreciated by the children as it brought happiness to the children for a short period of time while they faced very difficult social and economic conditions in their daily lives. The excitement and joy expressed by the children on receiving their Eid gifts from the MYF every year is very memorable.

As these refugee camps started to empty with people either moving abroad, to different parts of Bosnia or back to their pre-war homes, the number of children in the camps started to decrease rapidly. Our project then moved to help the children whose families were moving to their pre-war homes in Eastern Bosnia and was based in 3 locations, Josanica, Krizivici and Pobudje.

The families and children were moving back to a hostile and ethnically cleansed environment. This was in addition to the social and economic challenges that they had faced while in the camps so our project was doubly welcomed here. The project continued on a similar theme of educational, cultural and religious support and brought much happiness and joy to the children involved in our project.

The MYF arranged many visits to Bosnia over the course of the project where people wishing to see the BCP and Bosnia would come along in a group visit for 10 days or so. Alhamdulillah the feedback from the people who went on these visits was always very positive and most of the people who went wanted to return on future visits. The children being helped by the BCP also greatly enjoyed the visits. These visits were greatly appreciated and were highly beneficial to both the visitors and to the children. Further visits to Bosnia are planned by the MYF for the future inshAllah so if anyone is interested in visiting Bosnia please enquire at the MYF office.

The yearly visits to the Srebrenica commemoration ceremony on the 11th of July every year were particularly poignant as the scene of hundreds of bodies who had been massacred being buried each year at the commemoration site was repeated year after year after year. It was the 20th anniversary of the genocide this month but more bodies are still being found in the mass graves in which they were dumped. The anguish of the surviving relatives as their loved ones who were murdered in such horrific circumstances were being finally laid to rest will never be forgotten.

Let us try to learn the lessons from this shameful episode in human history, that prejudice, intolerance and hatred of fellow human beings must never be allowed in a civilised society.

Any donations which we continue to receive for the BCP will automatically be transferred to support other projects at the MYF. If you would like further details about this, please contact the MYF office.