“... That's the point of it all. To me, the number of scientific citations is not important; how important is the number of children that we managed to "pluck"? We have successfully relocated numerous children from Bosnia and Herzegovina. We have children who are in regular schools, who are the best students in regular primary schools... do you know what an undertaking it is to fit into our education system as it is and to start as a child who had difficulties, who was developmentally delayed? It's an incredible undertaking. What exactly is a reinforcer? What is motivation? That's it—the effects of work. My effects of work are the most beautiful thing in the world. It's when your child speaks for the first time... When you have a 10-year-old child who has a voice for the first time... that's a rare thing in the world. This is happening in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We don't even know how to appreciate what we are capable of doing here and what we can provide. But when you have a 10-year-old child who speaks for the first time in his life, that's a big deal. Then I cry too; parents cry, teachers cry; it's incredible... We taught so many children to speak, learned to pair, write their name, hold a pencil, and walk, and that's what it doesn't allow me to give up because if we leave and we close, there is still no one to take over to continue doing it, not enough people... My goal was to produce as much material as possible that is free, to share with people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to change the way educators, pediatricians, pediatric nurses, psychologists, speech therapists, and special education teachers are trained. All these professions can learn something new, and something new is what we saw in the world, tested here, proved, and shared with others."
Nirvana Pištoljević, executive director of EDUSA, the Association for the Advancement of Education and Support for Children with and without Developmental Disabilities, is a transdisciplinary scientist who acquired all her academic knowledge in America, where she lived and worked for 16 years. She finished psychology at Columbia University; after that, she also completed 3 master's theses in different fields. She later received her doctorate in applied behavioral analysis. After his doctorate, at the same university, he replaced the student and assistant position with a professorship. At the same time, she was the director of the scientific research center, which included early intervention, working with children from 18 months to 3 years, and preschool program, working with children from 3 to 5 years. She also taught in Italy and Parma and was a visiting professor at many prestigious universities. She knew very early on that she wanted to contribute to the improvement of the world in which we live and to focus on the most vulnerable category—children. Top education was the only option she put in front of her, and she knew that she could reach that goal and overcome all obstacles only through work. "Oh work. If I were to explain to you now how much I worked... that's not normal. I started working full-time in 1996; that's 50 hours a week. I worked 50 hours a week while I was studying. Imagine one day... and for ten full years, my days looked like this: I get up in the morning, go to work, work for nine hours, run to lectures in the evening, take as many lectures as I can fit into that schedule... one day off in during the week I am at the university all day, and on the weekend I try to do some of the assignments, writing scientific papers, etc. On my lunch break, in the car park, I study for exams. When I enrolled in my first master's degree (since I deal with applied science), I was always interested in how, not only why theoretically. I worked, I got up at 6 in the morning, I worked with children in different schools, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., then I was at lectures from 5 pm to 10 pm. And for ten years, that's an incredible sacrifice. I didn't have the time for that. I studied. I never asked why it's so difficult for me. I paid for my education myself, and it's possible; you just have to work. And America is an amazing country that gives you that opportunity, no matter what your English is, what country you're from, if you work, if you're hardworking and persistent, a good student, all the doors open for you, by themselves. It was a dream and an undertaking. As a refugee from BiH, the Americans were looking at me. How could you enter Colombia? I finished my master's degree, and then the professor told me that I had to stay for my doctorate because of my grades, because of everything. I immediately had a teaching assistant position at the university, so I had experience and research constantly. Before that, at the university, at the same time as I worked in the fashion industry, I also worked in the laboratory to find out which field of psychology interests me the most, because psychology as psychology is nothing; it is just a general knowledge of psychology... You just specialize by choosing a profession and a doctorate. You then get an outline of who you are and what you are. So I worked in different laboratories with different professors and different types of research to understand what attracted me the most, and then I realized that it is not so much psychology as psychology, because a psychologist can help a child for 45 minutes once a week, and someone who spends 5 hours a day in the classroom in the classroom with that child can change his life.
At EDUSU, they have programs of functional workshops not only for children but also for parents. They offer different innovative programs, and do scientific research; they are the only ones in BiH to have created a behavioral scale measuring instrument for monitoring children's development. With Nirvana at the head of the team, they also created many projects in Palestine and implemented them in numerous other countries, helping children from different continents. They cooperate with Unicef, with scientists from all over the world. They are trying to make such services available to everyone in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in cooperation with state authorities, to make them free, while at the same time trying to change people's awareness of the most basic causes of the problems they are trying to solve. "The influence of the environment on the development of the brain is one of the largest and most researched areas, but also the biggest enigma. We have to start talking about pregnancy, the impact of pollution, and the impact of smoking, not only primary but also secondary, and tertiary, nobody talks about it in our country, unfortunately, we still smoke in public places, which is terrible. We know that the effects of smoking are terrible for brain development, they correlate with the development of autism. We know about the impact of pollution. We are consistently among the first in the world. The already proven influence of air pollution on brain development, i.e. autism. We already know such things from the literature to a great extent... not to mention unhealthy lifestyles, etc. So we have to go back to the basics, we need to protect our pregnancy first so that we can talk about healthy growth and development and then to maintain that development, to protect it, so that children have proper stimulation, that they are not in front of screens for hours, that they are not neglected, because speech stimulates speech, children require communication. To improve our preschool programs, to be real preschool programs that are intensive, that develop curiosity, that develop real skills that are necessary for a successful individual in the 21st century. I believe that when you do something in life you should try to do your best and do it in the best possible way. Or not to work at all. And it always guided me my whole life, as a child. I always believed in that certain quality, and in the fact that a person should really make an effort and always be at a very high level, in everything he does in his life. So did my upbringing, I struggled and my dream was to graduate from one of these schools… which is very unattainable for most people in the world but also available if you are a very good student and can handle it. I want to constantly improve myself. I have to study. Every 5 minutes something new from the field that interests me happens. I can't capture everything that happens, how many things happen in science. I have to improve myself so that I can help and transfer that knowledge to educators, parents, and children... a system must constantly develop itself, and you can only do that with knowledge. Education is only the starting point and you continue at the same pace, there is no other…” This series is implemented in partnership with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), with the support of the United Kingdom Government. (https://ba.n1info.com/)
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