North West Balkans

Save the Children in North West Balkans (SCiNWB) is headquartered in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), with field offices located in Bihac (BiH) and Belgrade (Serbia). Our presence in Serbia includes the Balkans Migration and Displacement Hub. 

We have a diverse team of staff that come from 8 countries—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Italy, and Norway—and together, we speak more than 15 languages.​

We work in development and humanitarian contexts across four thematic areas - Child Protection, Education, Child Poverty and Climate Change. We address the most pressing and sensitive issues, focusing on those that impact children the most, particularly children from vulnerable and marginalized groups.​

Balkans Migration and Displacement Hub (BMDH) aims to improve knowledge about refugee and migrant children arriving in Europe through research, trend monitoring and evidence generation. BMDH documents good practices, promote route-based programming, raise the visibility of children's needs and advocate for their rights.​ 

Our vision is a world in which every child attains the right to survival, protection, development and participation.

Our mission is to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children, and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives.

Localisation: SC NWB, including BMDH, has a longstanding commitment to a strong localisation and partnership approach and well-established long-term relationships with local CSOs in the Balkans. In 2024, we gathered local CSOs and grassroot organizations responding to the refugee and migration crises from the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and the Baltics for a series peer-to-peer and learning exchanges. Our strategic steer promotes the development of equitable partnerships where local partners are not merely targets of capacity-building initiatives but positioned and elevated as holders of knowledge and experience in the region. 

Advocacy: In 2024, SC NWB achieved significant advocacy milestones. Our preparatory learning programs for refugee and migrant children were successfully integrated into the formal education system and taken over by local primary schools. Additionally, the HEART methodology, developed by SC US, was incorporated as an elective course at a Pedagogical Faculty, providing future teachers with valuable learning opportunities.
 

BMDH ensured the visibility of children affected by migration and displacement with new publications and methodologies and a focus on child participation.
 

Innovation: SC NWB started working on updating and digitalizing Boxes of Wonder methodology, an innovative approach to providing meaningful psychosocial support to children in transit. We have also established interactive dashboards with real-time data for all interventions, including migration.
 

SC NWB is a pioneer in empowering children to understand and express their sexuality safely, reducing barriers for youth to seek help if concerned about their sexual interests in children, and promoting early intervention.
 

SC NWB achieved a significant impact by strengthening the capacity of schools and educational institutions to respond to violence and safety risks in and around school environments, in alignment with the Safe Schools Common Approach.