Dedicated their lives to collecting school bags for children in BiH: So far, 10,000 packages have been delivered

Kemal's wife Amra wanted to send a few school bags for poor children to Bosnia and Herzegovina. But when their friends heard about it, they wanted to join their idea. From a few school bags with supplies, a large humanitarian project suddenly emerged, through which the 10,000th bag, or even more, was recently delivered to children in BiH.

- It all started in 2010 as a private initiative of my wife Amra and me. We enrolled our son Alen in school and came into contact with the first costs of children's education. We had to buy a school bag, supplies, equipment, etc. This led me to think about children in BiH, whose parents cannot provide them with everything they need for school - Kemal Smajić (35) told the BiH news agency Patria. His family had been involved in various humanitarian actions that helped people in BiH before, but this was their first personal project, which they are most proud of today and which is expanding more and more every day.

- That summer, we sent bags and supplies for four more schools in Voljic near Gornji Vakuf, Ilidža, Kozarac, and Divić near Zvornik. Family and close friends helped us with the purchase of the bags.

Kemal was born in Zvornik. However, when the last Serbian aggression against BiH began in 1992, he moved to Austria with his family. Today, he is a successful manager in the Austrian post office. However, Bosnia and Herzegovina is always in the first place in his heart.

In February 2011, Kemal and his friends founded the association "Futurebag – Torba Za Budućnost" (Bag For The Future). The association is based in Vienna. At the beginning, it had only four members, and today it is a project that brings together almost 30 people, who send thousands of bags to children in BiH annually.

Kemal and his colleagues most often raise money for school bags through humanitarian concerts they organize in Austria.

These are mostly sevdalinka concerts. And, to make it all even more meaningful, within the association, they launched a separate project called "Wiener Sevdah", within which they organize sevdah concerts in Austria. The purchase of bags and school supplies for the children of Bosnia and Herzegovina is now mainly financed by ticket sales at these concerts.

The last concert was last Saturday, when the sevdah group Halka gave a spectacular performance. Earlier, Damir Imamović, Vanja Muhović, Amira Medunjanin, and the group Divanhana performed for the needs of the project, for very small fees, all in order to leave as much money as possible for the purchase of bags.

- Cultural events of the BiH diaspora in Vienna, as well as in many cities in Europe, have been reduced to a minimum. That is why we wanted to combine the pleasant with the useful in volunteer humanitarian work. Through sevdalinka concerts, we present Bosnia and Herzegovina in the best possible light, and from the money collected from ticket sales, we buy bags for our children in BiH - says Kemal for Patria.

- All people in the Association work completely voluntarily. Even those who work on organizing concerts, who are ushers or similar, buy tickets like all other guests. This is a project in which we give ourselves - he adds.

Members of the "Futurebag – Torba Za Budućnost" Association deliver school packages directly to local schools, because in this way they want to avoid any malversations with local or higher authorities in BiH. So far, they have visited schools in all parts of the country, from Srebrenica in the east of BiH to Bužim in the northwest. They do not consider the religious affiliation of the children. Both Bosniak, Serb, and Croat students receive gifts equally, writes Patria.