Support a Peace Farm in Bosnia and Herzegovina

A garden of possibilities

This year was a year of very important construction works in our Garden. We moved into a new ancillary facility whose construction we started last year thanks to the support of our friend Kristina Bulling from Bremen in Germany and donations we raised through the GlobalGiving platform.

We are happy to inform you that we have managed to find funds and renovate one of the two existing houses and we have moved the CIM office to the Garden of Opportunities and thus reduced the cost of renting office space.

Our lake is finally finished and despite the great drought that has befallen us this year, the lake has not dried up.

In partnership with our friends from the Die Schwelle Foundation, we managed to secure funds to renovate another house in which we plan to place a therapy room, bedrooms and bathrooms with toilets in order to attract tourists and other organizations to use our services. Through the same project, we have provided funds for the construction of an exercise room in nature and the creation of raised beds with participants in permaculture and peacebuilding workshops that we plan to implement next year.

From the company Akrobat doo we received a large trampoline that will be part of the Children's Corner on the farm that we plan to make in 2022. We want to create the Children's gardner because our youngest members wish was to have a place to play after they do serious work learning about biodiversity and ecology. Our wish is to build a place for children so they can also come and spend their free time at the farm.

In June we managed to find funds and make a sandy volleyball court, and in July we designed and arranged the center of our Garden. The center of the Garden is made in the shape of a large circle in the middle of which is a tree and the rest of the center will be filled with tulips of various colors while rosemary and lavender will be planted on the edges of the center. As part of the celebration of the International Day of Peace, the linden tree was planted by the mayor of Sanski Most Faris Hasanbegovic and the director of the Austrian Cultural Forum, Sabine Kernthalleruz.

Due to the drought that hit us from May until the end of September, although our hard-working gardening volunteers did their best, the yields in the garden were not what we expected but we still produced enough healthy food for everyone to garden at the end of the season. had enough onions, garlic, tomatoes, peas and eggplant. This year we experimented with watermelon and melon and ate some excellent fruits of this fruit from our garden.

We started looking for companies to make architectural plans in order to start making designs for the future seminar center, with the goal of being able to implement activities in the Garden during the winter months.

In November, thanks to several private donations, with the help of our volunteers, we planted 80 seedlings of different fruits, and we hope that next year we will have the conditions to plant at least the same number.

As a reminder, the Garden of Opportunities is conceived as a meeting place for different people, a place of exchange, creativity and learning, where organic food is grown according to the principles of permaculture, with a restaurant, hostel and nature center for children, but also numerous activities such as peace camps. and various trainings for young people from BiH and the world.

We hope that you all safe and healthy, and we would like to proudly show you our work in the past few months at our Peace Farm.

We are so proud how much with the help of volunteers and donors we succeeded to the Peace Farm becoming the place we always dreamed of. We have renovated the house which we are now using as CIM's new offices as well as we renovated the garage. We continued to sow the garden like every year and maintain, and this year we also had a variety of fruits and vegetables.

We also have planted a new flower garden and arranged the lake and the path on the farm as well as the driveway of the farm. 

We had a lot of volunteers at the farm through summer, as well as a seven-day camp for volunteers all around Bosnia and Herzegovina which came to help us with the work we had at the Peace Farm but also enjoy the nature and to hang out and get away from the daily stress because of the pandemic. 

We also started a section called Eco-kids at the Peace Farm for children and youth all ages, to come learn about gardening, permaculture but also socialize and creat new friendships. 

We are now preparing the twelfth International Peace Week at the Peace Farm and we are excited to have it planned on the farm.

We hope that you all safe and healthy, and we would like to proudly show you our work in the past few months in our Peace Farm.

In 2021 we started to work again in our garden together with locals from Sanski Most. We have offered our land on the Peace farm in Sanski Most for the community to plant vegetables and work on food production.

In recent months in our Garden of opportunity we have planted many vegetables and every day we see more and more progress We are so happy to see our garden becoming more beautiful and full of new fruits every year.

Our local volunteers were such a great help for us and also the Volunteers club in Sanski Most they also gave their help and support in developing the garden.

We are currently in the process of arranging the houses located on the Peace Farm, where one house will soon become the official office of the Center for Peacebuilding.

In the period of 21st till the 23rd May CIM hosted a reunion for previous camp participants but also their parents joined.  During the two-day gathering, participants and parents had the opportunity to discuss the impact of CIM's activities on the individual development of participants. We also held field work with them where we worked on arranging our Peace Farm and Garden where we and our parents were introduced to our plans for the future.

Summer is just around the corner and we are so excited for the upcoming activities that are waiting at the Peace Farm.

First we wish you Happy New Year and we hope that you are all safe and healthy. 

In 2020, our Peace Farm, Garden of opportunities, underwent a transformation. Although werecorded positive changes in the last year as well, this time the garden "blossomed".

As stated, in the many ways COVID-19 has affected the Peace Farm - but in a surprisingly positive sense.

In the previous report you had the chance to read all our successful activities and projects that were organized at the Peace Farm and which kind of new things we got. 

We made syrup from wild nettle and mint, while we prepared oil from marigold and St. John's wort.

In addition to land cultivation and agricultural production, we took care of the appearance of our farm. We removed the old auxiliary facilities and started building new ones that offer more
space for storing materials and tools.

Our lake got its first inhabitants. The two turtles found their home next to numerous frogs and insects. In September, 12 carp joined them.

During the camps, unfavorable weather conditions on several occasions endangered the continuation of activities and the stay of the participants themselves. Therefore, in the coming period we plan to build a facility that will serve as accommodation for our participants and which will allow us to organize activities throughout the year and thus increase the number of activities, reach a larger number of participants and achieve greater impact.

Since the situation with COVID-19 has made big changes in everyone lifes, we have tried to work on our Peace farm during and outside of our activities because in spite of all the things we cannot do in this situation we still have many things we can change and develop.

We were very pleased with the amount of vegetables and fruits with which the garden made us happy this year. We were able to sell some of the products to our local people in Sanski Most and the rest we were using to give to the people which were helping in seeding all of those seeds.

Even with the situation which surrounds us, we were able to organize many camps and educations at the Peace Farm during the summer time. Within the STaR project we organized two Peace Camp, a Training for Trainers and a Retreat program for all the youth participants from our Peace Camps. We also started about youth activism with the youth from the Krajina region and we were able to implement one training at the Peace Farm.

In every of these trainings and camps we organized teambuilding activities where we all together did work at the farm such as: cleaning the forest, making the a fireplace, cleaning the garden and picking up all the seeds, cleaning the area around the farm to be ready for future construction.

We feel really blessed also to announce that we made our first building at the Peace Farm which will be used as a work place such a space for workshops and for relaxing filled with various social games.