Varvarin, 23 September 2025

A Playground for the Smiling Athletes

In the village of Bačina, in the municipality of Varvarin, for the first time, the most beautiful sound a place can have is heard—children's laughter from a playground. Thanks to the support of the European Union through the EU PRO Plus programme, Bačina now has its first children's playground—a space where children can play, grow, and connect, and where parents have one more reason to stay.

This infrastructure intervention may be modest in scale, but it carries strong symbolic and social significance: in a community of just over 2,000 inhabitants, the playground sends a message that even smaller places deserve meaningful investments in childhood, family, and youth retention.

The project is worth 90,457 Euros, of which the European Union provided 73,946 Euros, while the local self-government contributed 16,511 Euros. Watch the video to see for yourself how a small change can make a big impact.

This initiative is part of 39 local infrastructure projects across Šumadija and Western Serbia, and Southern and Eastern Serbia, funded by the EU through the EU PRO Plus programme with over six million Euros. These projects are improving the quality of life by upgrading educational, healthcare, and social welfare institutions, as well as sports and cultural facilities, public administration buildings, and communal services.

Click here to watch the video about this story.