Humanitarian Organization Divac Program at ISB

Our Community Service Program at the school is turning it up a notch for the holiday season. The high school students on Wednesday, participated in a presentation by the Humanitarian Organization Divac (HOD). HOD employee Aleksandra is shown above, explaining the Christmas Card program. All of our students are selling Christmas Cards to raise money and awareness for HOD. Ana, shown to the right, gave a moving talk on the refugee problem in Serbia. HOD was founded by ex-NBA basketball star Vlade Divac. He is now living in Serbia and when he visited along with his wife Ana, the collection centers for refugees in Serbia, he was moved to help. Vlade was known for his philanthropic deeds, and now he is focusing his work in his home country.

During the break up of Yugoslavia, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Serb citizens were forced to flee their homes in Croatia, Kosovo, and Bosnia. Many were traumatized by the violence and the loss of their homes, jobs, and lives of loved ones. Many of the refugees still live in these centers, getting by with limited resources. The Serbian government and economy are still recovering from the wars and the international embargoes and can only supply limited support. HOD’s goal is to help these people get their lives back together. They have purchased over 100 homes for families and they are also giving job training to help the refugees start again.

From the HOD website is an excerpt about the program:

Today, Serbia is a country with the largest number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Europe.

Thousands of refugees and IDPs still live in collective centers across Serbia, in poor conditions, terrible hygiene, without jobs, salaries, pensions and often without the opportunity to legally obtain any type of income.

They can’t return to their homes. The refugee camps are their only “home”.

After more than 10 years of living in such circumstances, they feel abandoned, forgotten, without hope that they can make any change for the better. They have no will or strength to even try.

We ask that anybody who feels compelled, to join us in this effort to help them find new homes, material and financial security, so they can live a decent and dignified life once again.

Humanitarian Organization Divac (HOD) launched the “You Can Too” initiative with the mission to help these people realize their right to a home, a job, material security, psychosocial help and an opportunity to start a new life after years of living in refugee centers.

Individuals such as Vladimir Radmanovic, Zarko Paspalj, Scot Pollard, Sasha Danilovic, Chuck Peterson, Sasha Djordjevic, Chris Webber, Savo Milosevic, Dejan Bodiroga, Zoran Savic, Peja Stojakovic and many others, have already taken part. We invite you to join us.

If Divac can help, You Can Too!

I will let the refugees tell their own story in the video below. We plan on visiting a collection center in two weeks and the students want to help more.