Network Projects

PROJECT OF THE MONTH

Inspiring Inter-Ethnic Understanding in Bosnia

Stolac & Brcko, Bosnia Herzegovina

Aimed at alleviating educational segregation in Bosnia’s school system, the Brcko - Stolac exchange project is a response to the stark contrast between Bosnia’s most segregated school system, Stolac, and its most integrated, Brcko. The latter has become a unique model in Bosnia Herzegovina, as students from all three ethnic groups join together in the same classes, while the former is considered to be the country’s worst case of educational segregation.

Currently scheduled for launch in late 2010, the project will establish a traveling ‘film and theater festival’ that alternates between Stolac and Brcko. During its first year a selection of Bosniak and Croat students from Stolac will develop a series of short films about daily life in their school and in their community that would be shown during a joint-event with Brcko students.

This will be an enriching experience for the youth from Stolac, as students from different ethnicities will have an opportunity to collaborate on a common project, share it with another community, and learn from their Brcko peers about the contrasting experience of attending an integrated school system. In time, this would evolve into an institutionalized exchange between those communities, aimed at sharing the values and ideas necessary to eventually achieve tolerance and integration.

____________________________________________________________________

 

OTHER GLOBAL COMMUNITIES PROJECTS

Fostering Reconciliation & Development in Sri Lanka

Mallavi, Sri Lanka

From 1983 to 2009, the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka experienced a bloody and brutal civil war between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).  Experts claim that over 70,000 lives were lost, while hundreds of thousands more were displaced during the three-decades of war. This war was termed the ‘No Mercy War’ by the International Committee for the Red Cross.

Now that open warfare has ended in Sri Lanka, the Herculean tasks of physical reconstruction and socio-cultural reconciliation lie ahead. Understanding the important roles of post-war development and reconstruction to peacekeeping and peacebuilding at this juncture in Sri Lankan history, The King Center commissioned an international team that carried out two assessment missions on the island on November 2009 and January /February 2010. Additionally, the Center was engaged by the US State Department to carry out a series of nonviolence training in Colombo, Ampara, Batticoloa, and Jaffna in March 2010. These sessions reached some three thousand students and civil society workers.

During its visits to the island, we identified Mallavi, in the Northern Vanni region of Sri Lanka, as a location that requires immediate post-conflict development work. It is there that the organization believes the opportunity exists to establish a robust example of how nonviolence principles can be employed in the reconstruction and reconciliation process. This process would employ both community building and community development strategies.

The Center also witnessed an example an emerging infrastructure in the work of the Foundation of Goodness. A nongovernmental organization based in Seenigama, a small village on the south-west coast of the island, FoG exemplifies the framework of leadership, vision, mission, services, and collaboration necessary for a vibrant and robust empowerment model. We are forging collaboration with FoG and its founding visionary, Kushil Kushil Gunasekera, to replicate this model in the Vanni district. Through this effort, the Center hopes to establish a replicable model of how nonviolence may be employed as a means for community-based post-war reconstruction and reconciliation.