Balkans: Community building and violence prevention

We are collaborating with Udruga Mi and UNHCR on how to use this window of opportunity in the coming few years to support the processes needed in the region to support violence prevention, and to help people make the personal and collective steps to deal with open issues concerning issues of displacement and return in the region. Our goal is to support community leadership, and interactive forums needed for individuals from all war experiences, and from all ethnic/ national groups to be included in shaping the future of the region.
A main goal of CFOR, UNHCR Udruga Mi and the many organisations and individuals working in these regions, is to access the capacity and wisdom within communities to be able to take personal and social responsibility to find pathways to work through the collective and community wide trauma, and open issues of accountability, to be able to move forward intact.

Projects in the recent years and currently, ( 2006, 2008, 2009-2011) address all ‘Areas of State concern’, most devastated by the war, and having serious difficulties to recover, economically and emotionally. These projects are supported by UNHCR, with financial support from Dutch and Belgian embassies. In an exciting and important model, we are linking economic recovery with emotional recovery and conflict transformation. Forums deal with blocks to community development, and the importance of grappling with issues of accountability and collective trauma. At the same time specific economic initiatives are fostered and blocks to these projects are actively worked with in our forums.

With UNHCR and Udruga Mi we are also developing leadership training for these regions, 2009-2011.

Further work is being developed with other regions in the Balkans, including Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia, as well as the importance of relationships across the Balkan region and in relation to the EU.

HISTORY: 1996- present
Just after the war, in 1996, Arlene Audergon and Lane Arye facilitated a forum for the first time in Osijek, coordinated by the International Rescue Committee. Udruga Mi, an NGO in Croatia formed and developed close links with organisations throughout Croatia. Audergon and Arye worked in close cooperation with Udruga Mi and UNHCR. We facilitated forums twice a year supported by the UNHCR, OSI, OTI, OSCE, the Threshold Foundation and Norwegian, Danish, British, Dutch, and Belgian embassies. Each four day forum had approximately 80 people, from all sides of the war, and with their own war experience and trauma. Participants were from local NGOs local authorities, and international organisations, from a wide range of professions and activities all dealing with painful and volatile issues in their communities. In the forums these groups worked together on the conflicts and issues they met in the field. The forums were deeply emotional. Many hundreds of people attended these forums, and were touched in ways that impacted them personally and in their contributions and leadership in community.

More info on past projects
Publications