ConSim_Balkans_2010: CIVIL SOCIETY

++ APPROVED: ConSim_Balkans_2010 ++ APPROVED:
ConSim_Balkans_2010 ++

Fortunately we could re-schedule the whole project and are now very happy to announce that this year's project has been approved and that we, together with our partner, are set and ready to realize ConSim_Balkans_2010. As mentioned before, the most important difference is that we won't be able to hold the seminar in Berlin, as it was planned. However the content hasn't changed and so we will still be able to make an important contribution to regional civil-society cooperation.

Here are the new dates:

Facts & Figures:

workshops:

• Belgrade: 14th September (Tuesday)
• Skopje - 17th September (Friday)
• Mitrovica - 20rd September (Monday)
• Sarajevo - 24th September (Friday)

seminar:

• Skopje (Macedonia) - 23.10. to 02.11.2010

application:

Please send a filled-in application-form until the 31st August to Andreas Muckenfuß

Please find the respective documents at the bottom of this page

partners & contacts:

• Serbia - FRACTAL – Vuk Trajkovic

• Macedonia - CIVIL - Xhabir Memedi Deralla

• Kosovo - ProPeace - Valdete Idrizi

• Bosnia-Herzegovina - KULT - Jasmin Besic

Description:

This project is the continuation of our previous activities in the Balkan region. Together with our partners from Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia we will conduct a seminar that aims to be of additional value to the local conflict-transformation processes. For seven days, we invite six participants from each country from the 12th to 20th of September to Berlin [Germany] in order to get together and to identify difficulties and hindrances the participants are facing in their workaday life. This fundamental task will be followed by an alignment of the particular defiances and a subsequent detection of overlapping challenges. In order to attain these operating processes during the seminar we use the method of simulation-gaming that stimulates an interactive change of perspective and thus is helpful to discover new angles of view. In the end of the seminar we want to have accomplished an agile interchange of ways of looking at problems and a description of possible intersections and interfaces. After the seminar we want to sustain this fruitful exchange and use it as a starting point for conjointly problem-solving strategies between the participants.
We come from the perception that civil societies play the most important role in a sustainable transformation of social conflicts and therefore has to be encouraged and supported. In order to strengthen the particular civil societies systematically, it is necessary to analyse their situation and position within their respective social contexts, due to the goal of working out their strengths and weaknesses and to attend them specifically. This project makes a contribution on this, by reflecting and analysing the position of civil society in the respective conflicts and countries.
Through the seminar in Berlin in 2010 the basis for the second phase of the project will be established, when the participants start to work out concrete approaches for collective methods of resolution. Subsequently to this project, in a long term perspective, we want get together civil-society-actors from the Balkans and the Caucasus region.

Target-Group:

The target-group for this project are staff-members from civil-society-organizations from Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia, that already have experience in the field of conflict-transformation and in intercultural seminars as well. The content of the seminar is dedicated to activists of civil-society, that want to deepen their cross-linked thinking and are ready and willing to tackle shared problems across borders. For them the seminar offers the chance to enlarge their contacts to partners in the region and thus to develop further options for actions. The selection of adequate participants for this project is of great importance in order to provide a surplus profit for the regional civil-conflict-transformation. Therefore the project includes a workshop in each of the participating countries. For these workshops we invite 15 actors from the national civil society sector to get to know each other better and to do a first analysis of the national situation of civil society. During these workshops we will also conduct a short simulation, that allows us to find out how confident the participants are with the method and to what degree they will be able to benefit from the project. Afterwards we chose along with our local partner six participants that we invite to participate in the seminar in Berlin.

Goals:

The main goal of this project is to bring actors of civil society from Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia together in order to provide a common and shared analysis of the current situation and accompanying problems of civil society concerning their relations towards the population and the state as well. Herefrom the participants develop a first common problem-solving strategy that allows them to combine their capabilities and resources so as to act with collective strength. With the aid of the method of simulation-gaming the participants get the chance to experience arising conflicts from a different perspective, to try out collectively gathered problem-solving-strategies and to recognize mutual dilemmas as well as synergetic effects. In the ensuing wrap-up-phase the participants evaluate the experiences from the simulation and transfer them into strategies of action. Herein we see the additional value for the participants' working routine. In the end of the project the participants possess a further readiness and willingness for collective cooperation, through the reciprocal exchange, the new approaches gained via the simulation, as well as through the shared concept of a possible realization of these.