The holidays will soon be behind us, but the needs of people living in difficult conditions do not end with the end of the calendar euphoria. Precisely in the days of snow, ice and power outages, Pomozi.ba teams are on the ground – distributing aggregates in the municipality of Konjic, meals to those who need help the most, and in parallel they continue one of the most important reconstruction projects after the floods, the construction of 16 residential buildings for 20 families in Donja Jablanica. We talked in Novi dan with Elvir Karalić, the director of Pomozi.ba, about solidarity that must last the whole year, about people as we are and as we can be.
“I must say right away that when it comes to Bosnians and Herzegovinians, empathy and solidarity is present throughout the year, so we are a positive exception and I often cite examples, as we know, on the 30th of the month, when it cannot be a higher date, everyone is waiting for salaries so that 100,000 marks or euros can be raised overnight for the treatment of a beloved fellow citizen. Empathy is constantly present, but I can say that during the holidays it is even more intensified and we see it through payments, i.e. through support for certain projects, that the citizens are again engaged there, ready to help even more”, said Karalić.
He said that thanks to those people, but also to the organization of workers and volunteers in the association, they manage to meet people’s expectations. In particular, the number of beneficiaries of the “Meal for All” project has increased. They always try to be available to citizens, which is especially evident in the most difficult situations like the one that happened in Jablanica. They did not forget its citizens even today, and they built houses for a large number of them and helped them get housing.
“We are already at the end of the roh bau phase. Sometime in the spring, we plan to start with the facade and the completion of the interior work. We hope for families to move into the household in the spring,” he said.
When asked what exhausted them the most last year, but also what motivated them the most, he said: “Compared to the previous six years from 2019, when we had various situations from the corona virus to earthquakes, wars, and what not, 2025 was a bit more peaceful. We continued our engagement in flood-affected areas. On the one hand, all these situations, all actions and projects drain people, and on the other hand, they give us the strength to continue.”
Everything they watch every day leaves a mark and that’s why not everyone can do this job.
“For example, if we take the volunteerism sector, that increased presence of empathy among employees can sometimes even be counterproductive. That our people burn out quickly. That they cannot cope with all these situations. When you have dozens of patients every day from babies to people who are 70 years old, etc. So, if someone is too emotional, simply, they cannot cope with all this very, very quickly, then people simply raise their hands. So we have to, depending on what position we hire people for let’s pay special attention to the person to see how easy it is for that workplace”, stated Karalić.
As in previous years, in 2025 the number of those who need help with food has increased.
“We see this tendency to increase, we have an increased number of requests, people asking for help with food, some other things. We manage to respond to requests, which means that citizens stand behind our organization with their donations,” said Karalić.
And how humane our people are, regardless of whether they live in BiH or the diaspora, is shown by the fact that they also help those who are in need outside our country. Karalić reminded her that in 2013, the first aid convoy from Bosnia and Herzegovina left for Syria, and last year and at the beginning of this year they were also sent to Gaza.
“Then I personally accompanied the aid that was sent from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Syria and it left a big, big impression on me when I saw all the destruction there. When I somehow draw a parallel between the war-affected zones, here, let’s say now, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the needs of the socially vulnerable population, I will always put these people who are currently at war in the first place and that they are a priority and that they should be helped because, some remember, some don’t, what and how it was in the nineties”, he added.
And Pomozi.ba is also recognizable for the fact that it collects money for seriously ill citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is, they do the work that institutions should do. But, unfortunately, this is not the case.
“Why do so many people go to a non-governmental organization? Why do they contact a non-governmental organization and ask that organization to collect money so that they can go to treatment? This fact alone is an indicator that something is wrong. Actions are ongoing. An increasing number of people in Bosnia are contacting us and someone, now I say someone, I don’t know who it is, someone should ask the question – when they hear this, when they see what the reason is and why these citizens decide to take action, so they have no way out to go outside to they’re treating – what’s wrong. Let’s see how to solve it. There’s money, everyone says there’s money, but then what’s the problem?”, said Karalić.
In 2026, Pomozi.ba will undergo a reorganization.
“We are preparing for natural disasters, how to react, how to improve mechanization, how to prepare certain shelters. We are doing all this now in certain regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we are preparing for all these situations. And again, how we could, in cooperation with other governmental and non-governmental institutions, react better, better help people in crisis situations. That is just one example.
In the end, he had a message for the citizens of Gara: “I can only ask them to remain as they were until now, because, here, I mentioned perhaps on several occasions, that when it comes to empathy, when it comes to solidarity, the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are number one in Europe, and beyond, I can freely say from our experiences.# – he states. N1 BiH.
