Firefly aims to:
- Facilitate communication and joint cultural and educational activities between people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
- Decrease isolation in remote areas; establishing links between young people, through the promotion of co-operation between art or educational institutions both locally and in the wider international community.
- Provide people with opportunities to participate in activities not otherwise available to them, and to learn skills and gain qualifications which may help them find employment or simply increase self-confidence.
- Create opportunities for people from different countries to work together, either as volunteers teaching activities or through joint projects with youth groups, towards improving understanding and tolerance between people of different backgrounds, ideas and nationalities.
- Facilitate exchanges of ideas between organisations with compatible aims working internationally.
We originally worked towards those aims with the establishment of Firefly Youth Project, Bosnia in 1998. This has now been handed over to local management in Brčko, and our programmes of youth work and on-going arts-based reconcilation projects will continue there under the locally registered name, Svitac.
Firefly International continues to work with Svitac on youth and arts projects in Bosnia such as festivals and summer camps that involve individuals from other countries.
We have developed these projects to involve many other countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the UK and now work with a wide range of participants as well as continuing to build up links between divided communities on an international level through festivals, exchanges, trainings and support.
IDEOLOGY
Firefly focus’ on decreasing social division in general, whether caused by religion, economics, race, history, language, nationality or simply geographical distance.
We believe that for social change to occur, it’s important for people to gain personal links, interest and insight into other communities so that they have a reason to care about what happens to these other communities. For this to happen, people’s networks of friends, acquaintances and colleagues must cross boundaries of race, nationality, or language along which they’re often based, so that people’s personal concerns are not just about people in their own area. The most simple way of doing this is just to ensure that people meet and work with more people from other countries.
The principle we use in Bosnia is that for any dividing force between individuals in a community, there will be many links – such as shared cultural heritage, language, artistic tastes, or simply love of food. The idea is to strengthen these shared interests and to create multiple personal links along them. It was important for these links to exist between people, not just NGOs or voluntary groups, since whole communities need to care what happens to others to have a concrete effect. We now work on applying this principle to other people and groups around the world.
Firefly’s core belief is that it is vital for marginalised and vulnerable groups to become less isolated, more confident and to be given opportunities to play a greater part in society as a whole. As a result the majority of our projects focus on marginalised, vulnerable and minority groups – refugees, children, women, ethnic minorities and other such groups. Since social division is often unequal, we want to create links between grass-roots communities that allow them the strength and the support to be heard.
Firefly was originally set up by Ellie Maxwell, who saw it through from the initial days to founding the centre in Brčko, working alongside staff there, and kick-starting Firefly’s international work. Ellie sadly passed away in 2008, but her work is remembered every day by the people who knew her and all those who’s lives she had an incredible impact on. She is missed by all at Firefly.
