As you know, until recently, Yugoslavia has been under heavy economic sanctions, which were combined for a certain time with the bombing of many parts of the country, including Belgrade. After recent political changes new democratic government is elected. The first task of the government is the recovery of badly damaged infrastructure and economy. Serious social problems are everywhere. Some optimistic estimates for the time recovery to the level that we had before the sanctions started, range between ten and twenty years.

Although the high education is supposed to be one of the priorities in this situation one can only expect very slow recovery. In order to stop heavy brain drain, most probably the first task of the government will be an increase of salaries, which are nowadays symbolic. This is an important task of the new government and some modest steps in this direction are already made. However, as a university professor I share opinion with my colleagues that, in this situation, the support for other important segments of high education process have to wait very long. Namely, our laboratories for undergraduate and postgraduate studies are in terrible shape. The equipment for these laboratories is old and most of it should be scraped. For the last ten years almost no financial support for this purpose is given. Even when the Faculty got something it was in domestic currency and due to the sanctions we could not purchase anything from abroad.

Briefly speaking, the situation in undergraduate labs is disastrous and one can imagine what is going on at postgraduate level and relevant small-scale research that should follow these studies. Therefore, my appeal is directed to all institutions working in the field of physics and to all people of good will to help us to survive and improve the level of education. I think that this noble gesture would be of common interest to all physicists.

Therefore, if somebody is willing to donate the equipment, which is not being needed, and that can still be useful for our purpose, may help us a lot. This includes pieces of equipment, instruments, components (optical, electrical, mechanical) etc. This means almost everything that may be used in the student's lab or in research. The same is valid for physical journals and books that we can not afford to bye.

Information for those willing to make financial donation. In this case it is not necessary to transfer to Belgrade. The required equipment would be specified here, purchased by donator and send to Belgrade as a humanitarian help for educational purposes.

This appeal for help may be supported from the Faculty of Physics and Meteorology side with all sorts of collaborations, work on common projects, visits, exchange of students etc.

Prof. Dr. Nikola Konjevic