Brief Description

Refugee Aid Serbia (RAS) is an NGO based in Belgrade, Serbia, focused on educational, social, and linguistic support for refugees.

Vision & Mission

RAS aims to create safe spaces for refugees and asylum seekers throughout Serbia, offering beneficiaries the opportunity to learn, play, and gain skills both within and outside the refugee camp setting. We are dedicated to providing high-quality, personal, and practical education in pursuit of bridging learning gaps, building skills for the future, and mitigating the feelings of restlessness and frustration that stem from living in camp conditions. Our recreational and cultural activities give refugees the opportunity to come together with the local community to share and gain knowledge, facilitating their further integration into Serbian society.

Aims & Activities

We currently operate a physical classroom space, The Workshop: Belgrade; a digital classroom, The Workshop: Online; and a recreational outreach program in camps and institutional centres across the country, The Workshop: On-the-Road. In Belgrade and as a component of the On-the-Road project, we run sporting (cricket and football) sessions on a weekly basis, culminating in tournaments between refugees and locals, while we have also undertaken various forms of community outreach and awareness-raising programmes, NFI distributions and other activities, such as gardening.

Facts & Figures

                            RAS co-founded The Workshop: Belgrade in April of 2017 as a safe space and educational hub for refugees and asylum seekers in Belgrade, Serbia. Our space is one of the few in the country dedicated to providing learning and recreational activities outside of the restrictive refugee camp setting. Here, refugees come together with local and foreign volunteers to share and gain knowledge. We’ve developed complementary curricula meant to build skills and confidence and enable children's full participation in classroom environments. At the same time, our students range in age from nine to sixty years old, demonstrating that all are welcome. Volunteer teachers from Serbia and around the world provide predominantly Serbian, English, and German language lessons, using curricula developed by our team.
                            

                            Beneficiaries of all ages from across the world are welcome at The Workshop. However, we find that the most common users of our services are teenagers and young adults looking to learn Serbian, English or German to help facilitate their integration into local and/or European society. These are people that are often left behind by the educational system and find themselves with limited opportunities – formal or informal – to learn the language skills and cultural information necessary to further their inclusion into their new society.
                            

Awards

No awards received