SOMETHING NEW IN SUNCOKRET

March the 1st was the starting date of Health and social education for young people, our new project for children in primary and high schools in New Zagreb. The project was initiated by Natalija Mujic (just about to get a diploma at the School for Social Work), Sanja Petravic (just about to get a diploma at the Faculty of Psychology), and Milena Medic (B.Sc. social work). Milena is leading the project.

Up until the beginning of May we had started with our project in the primary school Trnsko and in the collective center in Vlaska 87. The children involved are from 10 to 20 years old.

What do we want to achieve with this project? The main goal is to inform young people about puberty, birth-control, sexualy transmitted diseases, AIDS and addictions (alcohol, drugs, smoking). At the same time we want to have an influence on the development of socially acceptable attitudes, personal responsibility for their own choices and, especially, we want to work on the prevention of behavior which is seen as unacceptable in the society (promiscuity, pregnancy of minor, alcoholism, drug addiction and smoking).

[just-say-no] As a part of the project we organized a round table with addiction as the main subject. The guest speaker was dr. Slavko Sakoman (an expert for drug addiction). The round table was primarily for parents and they came in a large numbers.

Each day we have to work more and more. I hope that next year will be possible to organize work in a groups, because experience has shown us that working in groups enables us to achieve the best results. After the talk we had with pedagogues in certain primary schools we can be optimistic about the future of this project. Now we are planning work for the summer, but we will save it for the next adition. I hope we will see all the Suncokrets from Varazdin to Osijek, and from Zagreb, Pula down to south to Split and Brac.

See you soon.
Milena Medic