Thursday, June 2, 2011

June 1st

When I arrived at GAP today, there was not much for me to do because the internship coordinator here is out for the rest of the week. However, at NDC I sat in on two meetings. The first meeting was in their native language so unfortunately I could not understand a single word they were saying. Later one of the workers at NDC told me that they were discussing more on their education integration project and new projects as well. I was able to help them on a few grammatical errors in their document. Being able to actually help for the first time felt good, even if it was small. I hope that I will be able to do that more often because when reading through their reports, I have noticed quite a few simple errors that I can easily correct.
Anyway, during the second meeting, a member of NDC met with a woman from Finland, Alum from United World College, who was organizing this seven day peace studies conflict prevention and mediation workshop/summer school for local and international students ranging from ages 16-19. This workshop/summer school is being put on by the United World College (there is one in the United States). This is going to be completely funded by the cultural foundation of Finland so students do not have to pay to go. This woman (I forgot her name) was at NDC specifically to ask if one of the representatives from NDC would be a guest speaker and to finalize details and topics. Once that was done, we chatted for a while, discussing briefly our educational background, swapping names of good books to read, and interesting places go in Mostar. Once she found out my age, interests and what I was studying in college, she asked me to be a part of this peace studies workshop. It starts next week Monday and will cover peace studies framework, theories, the Bosnian conflict and its history history by a local history professor, conflict prevention and the role of media and conflict prevention discussed by a war reporter, conflict management and tool analysis, international humanitarian law presented by the Red Cross in Sarajevo, history of the divided cities of Mostar and Belgrade and NDC’s presentation on their education integration project. Elvir Duliman, the project coordinator for NDC thinks it would be a great idea for me to attend this. I think so too! There will be students from Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Sudan, India, Sierra Leone, Finland, Sweden, the United States and more.
            Once she left, one of the members of NDC took me out for an afternoon coffee where we discussed more in depths about their integration project, the importance of it, and what the initial problems they are seeing in elementary schools in regards to the role of identity. She was saying that here, children are only identify themselves as a boy or a girl and either Croat, Serb, or Bosniak. This poses to be a problem because it creates greater divisions within society. They don’t realize that they can be individuals aside from just on their ethnicity/ religion, (Croat Catholics, Serb Orthodox, and Bosniak Muslims) and have commonalities that cross ethnic lines. Growing up with the mentality of being an individual solely on ones ethnicity will only create deeper divisions in the future. That is one of the many reasons why NDC is working on their integration project.
            We also discussed the problems with politics in BiH and the corruption as well as her story as a refugee in the war.  Many people that I have met here stayed in Mostar for the entire duration of the war. Even now, she told me, when thunder cracks in the middle of the night like it did a couple of days ago, she would wake up in terror thinking it is a bomb going of f just meters from her house like it did when she was a small child. Terrified and confused, she grabbed a cigarette to calm her nerves. The affects of war here are still present today. That is why institutions like NDC and GAP are working so diligently to create a better life for citizens in the future.

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