A Smile Can Help

‘It’s not just advising on food. It’s mainly about giving new hope,’ describes Dragana Slavik on her work as a nutrition specialist helping the refugees to keep the children healthy while transiting Serbia.

‘When I advise how to ensure safe food for children, I’m helping the child and mother. A healthy child is a victory for me. It means I have done something good for the family,’ says Ms. Slavik, who works in a mobile team of SOS Children’s Village Serbia.

The mobile teams are constantly on the move – they visit the parks in Belgrade, where the refugees spend their time waiting for the buses to move on; and at the borders of Serbia and Hungary. They provide families and children with food, water, medical and hygienic packages, toys and counselling.

‘Nutrition is very important for children’s and mother’s health, because it’s very difficult to travel like that and take care of the health,’ Slavik says. ‘I counsel mothers and this is really a job that is saving lives. Often mothers don’t know how to feed children properly while in transit,’ she explains.

Playing helps

‘We talk a lot about food, but it’s not only about nutrition. It’s about supporting children and mothers. We give them first psychological aid. We can encourage them to be strong,’ she insists.  ‘Even playing can be helping. We give the children our time and our smiles; we let them know that we care. Every child needs love to grow up and to become strong and good person. Often the parents have so much stress that they can’t give children time or love.’

SOS co-worker with child near Kelebija crossing. Source: Mr Marko Mägi

The Power of a Smile

‘ [A] smile can help a lot. When we play, they see that there is somebody who cares, it can give them a new hope, a new strength to go on. They can see a better future: that they will make it to their destination, there’s no war and they will find a new home.’

Slavik reflects on the time she spent helping a family that she had met when she was working in SOS Children’s Villages Serbia’s child friendly space in Adaševci, near Croatian border.

The family was made up of the parents and three children, one of which was a two-month-old baby.  Slavik felt concern for the health of the baby, who she later learned had been neglected in the parents stress and mourning of the recent death of their four-year-old daughter, in Greece.

‘The older boys were acting aggressively.  The mother was so stressed and depressed that she couldn’t care about the children, she just cried,’ she recalls.

A New Family

 ‘We did a lot of counselling with [the mother], playing with children and helping them to calm down and concentrate on things again. The baby was very small, it was obvious she hadn’t had proper food. The mother didn’t know how to give the milk, she was giving formula twice a day, not breastfeeding and she didn’t really care.’

‘We were working with her, we were just there for her, hugging when she needed it. She was very sad and cried every day. As time passed by she started to smile, to have a new hope, she became more active and play with children and care about the baby. In the end she knew how to prepare food, the baby became healthier and started to grow. When they left in June it was a new family, not the one we met in March.’

‘This story is exactly why we are here, that’s why we work. It’s a splendid feeling to see that you did some good things in somebody’s life and helped to heal the family, not only physically but also mentally.’

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