Association “Nautilus” | Care Leavers Network

The Nautilus Association is a non-governmental organization officially registered in November 2014 but the idea of organizing and collaborating with young people without parental care whose growth has been in state institutions or in humanitarian organizations has been in progress since 2013.
The aim of the association is to improve the care of children and youth without parental care, but also to improve the conditions of life of all young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We want to point out that the we are the first youth organization in the region born in this way.
Though there has not been much time since the idea itself, we have achieved remarkable progress. Apart from being formally registered in this short period, we have implemented five projects and organized a large number of educational-interactive workshops in which more than 300 young people participated.
The name "NAUTILUS" was chosen by the legendary submarine from the book "20,000 miles under the sea" because Nautilus does not want to solve surface problems but prevent the causes of visible problems that are noticed deeply in the tissue of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian society.

Goal: To establish a network of young people without parental care;
Understanding the need to support care leavers, the NAUTILUS Association has initiated a project called Youth Voices from Bosnia and Herzegovina, in cooperation with SOS Children's Village of BiH. The general objective of the Project is to increase the quality and availability of care leavers to strengthen their capacity to exercise their rights through participation and activism aimed at social inclusion. It has been operationalized through two specific goals related to: a) actively involving care leavers in public representation and lobbying for their rights through the established Youth Network; and b) raise awareness of all interested parties and decision makers on the importance of supporting social inclusion of care leavers

Co-ordination of the projects on seven locations in B&H // This includes monthly meetings called YouthMeeting, where we talk about the struggles of young people in their local communities. With the same young people we also have meetings called Youth Network Meeting where we connect young people and create solutions for problems of the same or similar nature. These meetings enable us to be in constant communication with the youth and to listen to their needs, what our mission and vision is to achieve. 2. Volunteers of the NAUTILUS Association. "// Volunteers are young people who have a contractual relationship with the Association and are entrusted with tasks in their local communities.There are 10 volunteers at different locations. Their task is to design actions, and with our support and alignment to implement them independently. 3. Members of the Association "NAUTILUS" "// The members of the Association are young people who have independently accepted to be part of the family of NAUTILUS. Currently we have about 170 members. Even more than 50% are young people from alternative care, which makes sense of the existence of the Association itself. 4. Care leavers (young people 18+) 5. Employees of SOS Children's Village BiH // Our strategic partners