Every Number Tells a Story
Bosnian students use statistics and videos to share their vision for the future.
11 April 2025 15:00
For most Europeans, the European Union is simply a part of daily life. It’s in the freedom to travel without borders, the shared regulations like those concerning plastic bottle caps, and the routine of voting every few years. Yet for many, the EU remains in the background - something that quietly shapes lives rather than dominates them.
But for Bosnia and Herzegovina, a candidate country for EU membership, the path toward integration is very much in the foreground. As part of efforts to prepare the country’s statistical system for EU accession, Statistics Denmark, in collaboration with partners from Finland, Italy, and Slovenia, launched a unique initiative aimed at the next generation.
Facts about the project
This initiative is part of a Twinning project focused on enhancing the statistical capacity of Bosnia and Herzegovina across five key areas:
- Business Statistics
- Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA)
- Information and Communication Technology Statistics (ICT)
- Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (SILC), and
- Monthly Balance of Payments Statistics.
The project is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026. You can read more about the project here.
Under the headline "Every Number Tells a Story – And We Are Listening," a national video competition was held for 18–19-year-old students from secondary schools across Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their task: create a two-minute video using official statistics from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Eurostat to tell a story of their choosing.
The top 10 finalists presented their videos to a jury in Sarajevo on April 9. The themes were as diverse as the students themselves, covering topics such as demographics, gender, tourism, violent deaths, and living conditions. Yet one thread ran through them all - a desire for a better future. As one team from the Mixed Secondary School “Hasan Kikić” in Gradačac put it: “To Dream, to Build, to Change.”
This message of hope stood in contrast to the realities highlighted by official statistics, which continue to show inequalities both within Bosnia and Herzegovina and in comparison to EU member states. But as the competition showed, the first step to change is understanding the present - and numbers help tell that story.
Through their work, students not only learned how to interpret and present statistical data, but also how to use that data to communicate powerful, meaningful messages about their society and their future.
The winning entry came from the Mixed Secondary School in Busovača, which told a compelling story about Gross Domestic Product (GDP) statistics in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the EU.
You can watch the top 3 videos below:
- GDP is to blame
- Overuse of the Internet
- Marriages and divorces