May 31st

Today was my first day at the Governance Accountability Project (GAP). Once I arrived, a woman was there to greet me and show me my desk. There, she gave me a thick binder full of documented reports of the projects completed by GAP and was entitled The MAP Book (a.k.a. the Municipal Action Plan Handbook). It took me about two hours to read the majority of the material which I found to be very useful to get a better feel of what this organization does. According to GAP, they are “increasing the capacity of a critical mass of municipalities to better serve their citizens within a policy and fiscal framework of good governance.” They have local interventions that provide municipalities with the tools and resources they need to better serve their citizens and to build stronger communities. Examples of this include establishing modern citizen service centers, improving municipal finance, building municipal capacity to plan and implement capital improvement projects, strengthening municipal associations, identifying legislative improvements and priorities, operating the local Self-Governance development strategy, establishing a municipal role in the development of legislation, and strengthening the voice of cities and municipalities. After reading, I left to my second internship, NDC.

 At NDC I also did a large amount of reading. The Nansen Dialogue Center in Sarajevo just published their 2010 report a few days ago on their website so NDC here in Mostar thought it would be appropriate for me to read this 20 page report on their projects for the year to better understand their organization and what they do. Their main focus this past year was working with the integration of different schools. Specifically, one of their projects included bridging the ethnic divide in Stolac. This project was implemented by NDC Mostar (where I am interning) and their aim was to enhance relations between different ethnic groups in the town of Stolac. Their goal was also to improve interethnic relations in an ethnically divided school. They believe that this is the main prerequisite for tackling negative consequences of division within a community marked by ethnically divided education systems. Basically, they were trying to support integrated and inclusive education in Stolac high school. The other piece of material I read was a strategy booklet for 2011-2015. This one talked about problems that have not been addressed directly and different strategies for project implementation. These readings also took about two hours and after that, I was free to go. Because these are the beginning stages of my internship, the goal right now is educating myself as much as possible on my two internships and understanding exactly what they do and how they are helping the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina.