Sponsor Bosnian-Herzegovinian youth to build peace

Dear friends,

In the last part of the year 2022 we partnered with several organisations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and facilitated several workshops for the youth. WIn partnershio with the Interreligious council of Bosnia we facilitated workshops on the consequences of the Pandemic and with the youth we developed recommendations what to do in the post-pandemic time to help the youth define ways to deal better with it.

In cooperation with the IRC office based in Zenica we facilitated workshops on Identity and Cycles of revenge and reconciliation so the participants inderstood better how the past can be a burden that prevents us from living our full lives.

We continued to work with our Volunteer club as well. We organised a trip to Banja Luka so they could get to know the city, visiting major sites and also attending a workshop at the Jewish Center on prejudices and hate speech.

During the campaign 16 days of activism against violence on women and girls, youth from the Volunteer club helped our Theater group to organise performances in 3 schools and in the local theater in Sanski Most. 

We have established some new partnerships which will help us organise more workshops and trainings for the youth in 2023.

Thank you for your continuos support and love.

Wishing you all the best in the New Year.

Links:

• KULT - leading youth NGO in BiH helped us create this video

We have launched a new program activity called 'Active youth for protecting the Earth'.

With this activity we want to enable the youth of Sanski Most to learn more about the climate changes, how we are affected by it and most important what can we do to stop it.

In this phase we are training high school youth providing them scientific facts on climate change and exploring great examples around the World how youth can be engaged in solving one of the biggest problem of our present. After the initial steps we would like to include more youth in our struggle for better human treatment of our enviroment.

We are also developing plan to invite and include Ukrainian youth who had to leave their homes due to War in Ukraine so we can share and work together on healing and a better furue for all of us.

Dear friends and supporters,

Happy New Year!

Since August we have carried out many youth related actions:

International Peace Week, EcoKids, youth project „Bridge“, CIM's volunteer Club, Theater „Life“.

The 12th International Peace Week started September 16.  Together with our volunteers, participants and friends from abroad, through different activities, we held this particularly dear and special event for us, and the crown of it was celebration of the  September 21 - International Day of Peace.

This Peace week we devoted to topic of healing and reconciliation and all the program was carefuly planned so our participants had a chance to lear in depth about traumatisation, trauma healing and recovery. We also had some fun activities in the garden as well as swimming in the Sana river and hiking nearby hills.

On the 21st we hosted the Mayor of sanski Most Faris Hasanbegovic and representative of Austrian Cultural center from the Austrian embassy in Sarajevo Sabine Kernthaller who planted the first tree in our Garden's Center.

From June 2021, we started with the EcoKids section.

The aim of this section is for children in the early stages of development to understand the importance of nature conservation, but also to actively address issues related to climate change and nature conservation. We also want to enable children to learn how to grow certain plants, but also how to recognize edible wild plants in nature. So far we have 11 elementary and hihgschool kids involved in EcoKids activities. In the fall EcoKids members learned how to finish a vegetable growing season, how to prepare beds for next growing season and also how to plant fruit trees. We planted 80 fruit trees of a different kind.

Youth project  "Bridge"

The coordinator of the Volunteer Club, Elma Ramic, managed with her team to win a grant through the Pro-Future project, and to design and implement the "Bridge" project. It was about socializing and joint learning of young people from Sanski Most and Banja Luka and it lasted 6 months. We are proud that Elma and her team, even though they are high school students, managed to design and completely carry out a rather demanding project on their own. We congratulate Elma and look forward to the next joint ventures.

The MOST project was financially supported by USAID through the PRO-Future project, dedicated to building peace and trust among citizens of all ethnic and religious groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Please note that the Pro-Buducnost project is implemented by the American humanitarian organization Catholic Relief Services CRS, with partners: Caritas BiH, Institute for Youth Development KULT, Tuzla Citizens 'Forum (FGT), Helsinki Citizens' Parliament Banja Luka (hCA) and Interreligious Council in Bosnia and Herzegovina. *

CIM's Volunteer club continued to come together to learn and work with our vegetable garden as well as learning in depth about species we have in the fors at the Garden. Some members are also preparing presentations on youth activism and peacebuilding and in the 2022 they will be giving presentations in local schools so we introduce the Club and attract more young people to join.

Children's Theater "Life"

From September 2021, after the restrictions caused by the pandemic were lifted, our volunteer Timka Omanovic started preparations for a new show called "Stay Here". A total of 14 children participated in the preparation and performance of the play, which was performed on 27.12. where our guests were mostly children covered by the programs of several organizations from Sanski Most. After the show, we took the opportunity to present New Year's packages to the children present, which we received from the German humanitarian organization Aktion Pomoc.

Thank you for supporting us in our efforts to raise leaders of new generation who will be taking good care of our Planet with all being living on it.

We hope that you all safe and healthy, and we would like to proudly show you the work that the youth from Bosnia and Herzegovina has done in this summer. 

Since January, Center for Peacebuilding has established four Youth Clubs in Sanski Most, Novi Grad, Kljuc and Buzim which are municipalities in the Krajina region and a part of the Youth Regroup! Youth for Youth in Krajina. From the start of the Youth Clubs, young people from these municipalities had the opportunitiy to participate in workshops and activities related to volunteering, youth activism, peace-building, entrepreneurship but also have movie nights, playing board games or just gatherings and socializing at the premises of the Youth clubs. Till now these four Youth Clubs have gathered more than 350 young people on their activities and implemented more than 220 workshops and gatherings. As a completion of the project, we organized a third seminar for the coordinators and participants of the Youth Clubs. The had the opportunity to reflect on the last seven months since the Youth Clubs are working, to talk about the opportunities they had as well as talk about advantages and challenges they had cross in the Youth Clubs. On the last day of the third seminar we organized a Networking event where we invited participants from the Youth Clubs, partner organisation, mayors and youth counselors from every municipality as well as the Minister of the Una-Sana Canton. The participants of the Youth Clubs had the opportunity to present the work of the Youth Clubs, the importance of them and what they positive stories which we collected. 

As we mentioned on the previous report our participants from the Upgrade for Peace seminar have started their initiatives. One of the initiatives was held at the as a seven-day camp for our volunteers. They have worked at the Garden of Opportunities, helping us preparing the house to be Center for Peacebuilding next office and had having lectures about First aid, creating wooden figuers as well as swimming in the beautiful Sana river. 

We are now in preparation for our twelfth International Peace Week, where we will have youth from all Bosnia and Hercegovina come to celebrate with us. We will have a lot of lectures, reflections and evaluation on the past year and time just to relax and enjoy our Garden of Opportunities.