Government of the Republic of Serbia
Author: Nemanja Glavinić (Junior Achievement Serbia, Social Inclusion Blog)
The year is 2005, the month is May. I am looking at a several-day-old email account nemanjaglavinic@yahoo.com. There are only two emails in the Sent folder, both marked “TESTING” and sent so I can check if the email with my name is functioning. Create a new message. I click on this field for the first time with the intention of sending a memo to the employees in the Junior Achievement Serbia (JASerbia) office. Like everything else you do for the first time in your life, it is sloppy. Outside of rules and logic, the first thing I write is my signature.
“Nemanja Glavinić
Head of the Student Company ORION
Grammar School in Ivanjica”
To whom should you send a message where you are announcing the establishment of a student company in Ivanjica; that you are the Head of that company and that you have a serious intention to conduct business successfully? Well, to your entire email address book, of course, provided the person was involved in educational programmes for junior achievement in Serbia. (…)
Subject? At least that’s easy. “Greetings” and the message was sent. (…)
The same year, 2005, Orion won the third place at the competition for the best student companies in Serbia, and in 2006, it was the most successful student company in Serbia.
After two and a half years of working in Orion, I came to Belgrade to study and once again I sent an email with the same “Greetings” subject to the Junior Achievement Serbia employees. In the email, I wrote that I was in Belgrade and that I would like to stay involved somehow. My Greetings was followed by a meeting, which was followed by the inclination of everyone to do good things together. Together we established the Alumni club of JASerbia, and for a couple of years we assisted schools in Serbia with the implementation of the programme, and again I met hundreds of entrepreneurial students and almost as many entrepreneurial teachers.
So now, since 2012, every morning I go into the JASerbia office, as an employee in the programming department, I say “Greetings” to my colleagues, and so together we greet and meet this parallel world, a world in which young people in Serbia have the energy and space to believe in their ideas. A world where you can voluntarily stay in school after classes are over and work on weekends.
After all these years meeting with JASerbia (…), I have participated in almost a hundred competitions, and I have met thousands of young people who had the opportunity to experience what success really means. Every one of them succeeded in what they were doing, and even when they did not win prizes, they were winners. I have also met several hundred entrepreneurial teachers, true heroes of the society, who genuinely dedicate themselves to their work, thus making a better future for everyone. (…)
Today, my Sent folder has a lot more emails, but more importantly, now I have my Inbox full of messages form students who want to do something. (…)
The text in its entirety can be found on the Social Inclusion Blog.
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