YESTERDAY was a magic Monday for nearly 50 Bosnian children and their parents who fled to this country to avoid the war which has torn their country apart for nearly five years.
The youngsters were starting a fortnight's holiday organised by the Bosnian Community Development Project Centre in Dublin, which was set up to meet the needs of the 650 Bosnians living in Ireland.
One such Bosnian, Musad Popora, arrived from Sarajevo with war wounds received while defending his city against attacks from the Serbs who had laid siege to it. "Some people had a great deal of difficulty settling down, but in the main, families have settled down well and are beginning to enjoy a normal life," he says.
"However, there was a difficulty in that families did not know one another and it was very hard to integrate so we set about organising events to bring the families together.
The Bosnian Community Development Project, established in 1995 in association with the Irish Refugee Council and Refugee Trust, set itself the task of identifying the needs of the refugees.
Musad explains. "We established a FAS Community Employment scheme and there are 16 people involved, 14 of them Bosnian. It undertook a survey of the entire Bosnian Community to identify the needs of the people in relation to training, social activities and community services."
Arising out of the survey, they found the Bosnians, who are mainly Muslim and mostly located in the Clonsilla area, wanted greater social contact with one another to help them cope with the trauma of living in a new country.
"We had a couple of very good parties. One of them was at Christmas and the other marked a major Moslem holiday, Bajram, and they worked out very well with a big turn out from the Bonsians living here. We decided this year we would develop on that and set up a summer project to give the children and parents a chance to get together and meet one another."
Yesterday marked the start of the summer project, and by 10 a.m almost 50 children had arrived with their parents for the beginning of their first real summer break since arriving in Ireland.
The summer project has been arranged with funding from a number of sources, including Dublin Corporation and the European Union.
According to Musad, the main problem, apart from homesickness, for the refugee families is the lack of work. Only a tiny percentage of the Bosnians have been able to find full time work here.