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.