WHAT DOES THE NAME MALI BILINGVALI STAND FOR?
Mali Bilingvali (Little Bilinguals) is a small-scale language focused school/camp for Serbian children growing up abroad. Our goal is to help busy parents and grandparents in fostering Serbian language with their little ones when they visit Serbia during holidays.
Through creative play and organised activities the children are kept entertained and engaged. We believe that if children have fun in Serbian, they will associate that positive experience to the language and be encouraged to use it more when they return to the countries where they live.
SUMMER 2025
We organised the first edition of the Mali Bilingvali school in July this year. It ran for two consecutive weeks and we welcomed children aged from three to eight from three European countries: The UK, Italy and Germany. Together, we created, socialised, smiled, read and shared toys – all in Serbian. From the beginning, the use of the target language in the classroom was high.
THE RESULT
Throughout the two weeks, the children were happy and engaged. At the end of each day, they were very proud to show their parents what they worked on and created. The satisfaction was then passed onto the parents, who asked at the end of our programme why is the duration of the school limited to only two weeks.
After the first couple of days, the language improvement across the students was clear. Those with less ability gained confidence to speak up and those with higher ability refined their fluency. Exposure to Serbian language in a classroom setting proved to be effective. This is an environment that children in the diaspora do not have access to unless they maybe attend a Sunday school, which tend to be limited to only two hours per week.
The success of this first edition has led us to schedule new dates for the school, during the Christmas holidays in the West: 22.12.2025. – 02.01.2026.
INSTEAD OF CONCLUSION
We know from experience how hard it is to foster Serbian with children who live away from Serbia, especially when they start attending nursery or school. Even though heritage language maintenance largely falls directly on the parents, research and experience shows that strategies for its preservation need to extend beyond home. It is necessary to employ other tactics with the aim of increasing children’s active exposure to Serbian.
Our school is here to provide help and support to parents in their mission of raising multilingual children and preserving our language. We have seen that enrolling children to Mali bilingvali gives positive results and spreads love of Serbian.
We hope that the good word about our school spreads, that we continue to develop and grow, and ultimately provide your children with pleasant experiences and knowledge in Serbian, from one holiday to the next.
THANK YOU
A massive thank you to the team from the publishing house Finesica, as well as to our Janja (@Beca_heklica), who supported our initiative from the very start and provided beautiful gifts to the first generation of our graduates.
NEXT STEPS
If you are interested or have questions, contact us via DM on our Instagram page or Facebook.
We look forward to hearing from you,
Lena and Janja
