Zdravo Da Ste/Hi Neighbour is local, non-governmental, non-profit organization officially registered in 1994. The Programme was initiated by a group of volunteer developmental psychologists from Belgrade in 1992, and during the following years expanded to a network of psychologists, educators, social workers and others covering 24 municipalities in Serbia.

Workshop activities began in January 1992 in the collective centers for refugees in Pionirski grad in Belgrade, and in the collective center of the Red Cross in Bogovadja, where people from war-affected areas from former Yugoslavia were settled. In the beginning, the Programme focused on people in collective centers; since 1997, the Programme has included refugees living in private accommodations, and in summer 1999, internally displaced people from Kosovo and Metohia.

After NATO bombardment of Serbia in 1999, the Programme for Children and Youth included a new alternative pattern of activities. This Child and Culture Programme centered on building relations with cultural resources and reached the children from primary schools in Belgrade region. From October 2000 the Hi Neighbour (HN) Programme for school children started to be performed in primary schools in Serbia. In the beginning of 2002, the HN Programme for Preschool Children was officially accepted by the Ministry of Education and has been expanding to the preschool institutions in Serbia.

The Hi Neighbour Global Approach is an alternative based on original ideas of Lev Vigotsky:

• Human development is an endless process
• HN Programme is process oriented, not outcome oriented
• HN Programme is strongly connected with actual life
• Workshops are an interactive source for development

Human development is an endless process

Development is not specifically related to the childhood period. The human being is in a lifelong process of development. Development lasts from the birth until the death of a person. Moreover, development existed before and will last beyond these points through group activities.

Human development is process oriented, not outcome oriented

Today in use, most workshops are structured according to goals given in advance and are oriented toward expected outcomes. In Hi Neighbour any group interactive process is considered potentially developmental and the workshop provides a framework for group activities which could, but sometimes do not, occur within the framework. The openness for unpredicted and unexpected events is built into this framework. In short, the workshop is an open, divergent activity in which the facilitator is not a leader.

For HN human development is a process lasting through the whole lifetime. All participants are partners in joint activities, regardless of their gender, age, social or psychological status.

In order to build activities aiming at supporting and promoting development, HN has constructed the overall programme activities based on a process-oriented model. The general framework of the programme activities does not require a particular outcome. The children and adults are respected, active and creative participants.

HN Programme is strongly connected with actual life

Life space is seen as a common space and the basic source of further development is seen through building relations - between people through words, between people through expressions, and new games/plays, between people through activities, between people through culture. In these ways, in common creation, we were all using what we have, and also what hasn’t been seen before, as a possible source of human development.

The boundary between the workshop situation and everyday activities is not strict. The workshop is incorporated in every day life. There is no particular final point for workshop processes since they are going to be continued after a workshop is over. The workshop is running in reality in schools, common rooms, collective centers, public institutions and other places where everyday life is going on.

Workshops as an interactive source of development

From the HN methodological point of view, the workshop is a form of activity in which every participant is inseparable from the group activities and is actively working and learning through that experience. The main activity is exchange within a circle - every participant is contributing to the group process. This gives an opportunity to each participant to create a social event using various expressive modalities. It also prevents the situation of focused dyadic interaction in which some members are favored while others are passive. It prevents making small and favored circles within the existing circle. Exchange in a circle emphasizes the equality of all participants.

During workshops participants express themselves through various modalities: using words, voices, songs, performances, drawings, painting and movements . It was evident from workshop reports (made by participants or recorded on tape) that children and teachers, people of different ages, genders, and backgrounds manifested a great capacity for group creation. We believe that subtle social processes are reflected through products - stories, drawings, songs, poems, drama plays - individually and jointly created.