Youth for Youth / First time vote

Association of Election Officials in Bosnia and Herzegovina (AEOBiH), implemented the project "Youth for Youth / First time vote" from April to June 2011 thanks to the funds of the Council of Europe.

As part of this project were printed 10,000 brochures and held 80 workshops in 43 high schools in the Federation and the Republic of Serbian to as many young people animated to go to the polls.

The "First time vote" is a well-designed and needed in this area. In Bosnia and Herzegovina is a general problem of indifference to political and social life of the country, and this problem is particularly pronounced among young people. This is supported by the fact that we are the most lectures heard statements like: "I will not vote because they can not change anything", "They are all thieves and criminals", "Every time the same people on the electoral lists," and so on. And the fact that political parties during election campaigns, due to the weak of Youth Vote, the same are mentioned very rarely. For all these reasons we strongly believe that this project should continue and in the future.

We believe that the continuation of the project, special attention should be paid to better education of the lecturers, who are undoubtedly experts in this field, or in which, in some cases, apparent lack of experience in working with children so that some lectures boiled down mainly to the theoretical presentation theme that is the subject of the lecture. We believe that in the coming period it is necessary to put more emphasis on interactive work with children and give them the opportunity to fully participate in the workshop. It often happened that at the end of the lecture, students did not have time to seek answers to questions that are interested in them because the school time was fully utilized for only talk, so that some lectures turned into a "training of polling station committees". Therefore, we believe that the continuation of the project greater emphasis should be placed on the themes that motivate young people to get involved in the electoral process and social life and to see the elections as a chance to build a better society for themselves and their environment.