My apartment in Tuzla is about a 10 minute walk to the LSN BiH office. It’s in a great area and it has a wonderful jogging path. The great thing about Tuzla is that everything is so accessible and it’s quite easy to find your way around. One of the LSN BiH staff members, Tori, was kind enough to give me a tour of the city. He also showed me where the big mall was in town. They call it the Mercator and it has a huge supermaket inside. That is where I usually go to get my daily groceries.

Although many people here perceive me as someone who is native to this country, I am of course an outsider. My advantage is that I can take refuge in the diversity and cultural richness of Bosnia. Looking like an insider allows me to remain invisible and unnoticed of course. Yet, this also places me in the position of being simultaneously connected and disconnected from the society I am living in.

My first day at LSN BiH went along very well. I met most of the LSN BiH core staff and we discussed my work plan and expectations. I was able to get a closer look into what LSN BiH is doing at the local and regional level. As I noted in my earlier post, LSN BiH will register as a local NGO by the end of 2008. The LSN office in Washington D.C., which operates at a global level (and sustained LSN BiH up until this point), has transformed into Survivor Corps. The director here, Plamenko and another worker Muja, had a long discussion with me about LSN BiH’s plans for localization. They informed about the steps that LSN BiH is taking to comply with Bosnia’s laws and regulations on the establishment of local NGOs. Overcoming these bureaucratic procedures is just one of the many challenges that awaits LSN BiH as they transform into a Bosnian NGO.

The localization process for LSN BiH includes several objectives and actions, including but not limited to the development of a sustainable and effective organizational structure, the selection of competent governing bodies (Board of Directors, Advisory Board), designing a bi-language webpage for the organization, and the active promotion of the organization through the media. This means that my AP fellowship will be of great assistance to LSN BiH at this critical moment of transition. The AP model of using ICT as a tool to strengthen global advocacy campaigns will increase LSN BiH’s presence and visibility on the internet. Thus, it assists LSN BiH in partnership development, raising awareness about persons with disabilities (PWD), and it amplifies their campaign objectives and goals.

Plamenko informed me that LSN BiH works across 80 municipalities within Bosnia. I also learned about several LSN BiH current and prospective campaigns, such as the Regional Campaign for the Disability Rights Convention (DRC). Dragana, who is the Southeast Europe (SEE) Director here, will work on establishing a task force to monitor the implementation of the DRC across the Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Albania) and eventually across the South Caucasus as well (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh). Much of her work is focused on expanding and strengthening the regional network of survivor advocates on an individual, community, and organizational level.

LSN BiH is really changing the landscape of the disability rights movement through their unique method of operation. It is referred to as peer support. Through this model, LSN uses their outreach workers (OW’s), who are amputees themselves, to provide peer-to-peer counseling and support. This includes home and hospital visits, providing job training and small business grants, and conducting human rights and advocacy training to other survivors. This approach is the most innovative aspect of how LSN BiH operates.

Well, I must get going now since there is a big meeting that will take place where all of LSN BiH’s OW’s are gathering. It’s going to be great to meet some of them and learn more about their outreach work.

MEETING ZELJKO

Last week, Dragana introduced me to one of LSN’s outreach workers, the artist Zeljko Volas, who is the mastermind of the Balkana Art colony. Last year’s art colony was held from July 23-27, 2007 at the breathtaking Balkana lake. It is located in the Mrkonjic Grad Municipality in Bosnia. The purpose of the event was to raise awareness about the barriers that persons with disabilities experience. It also affirms the importance of the Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the region. Over 50 remarkable artwork pieces were created last year by disabled and non-disabled artists across the Balkans. This year’s art colony will be held sometime at the end of July. I’ll be attending it so be sure to return to my blog soon! There are many artists that I would like to profile.

Zeljko is a truly inspiring person and a powerful agent of change. I always believed that reconciliation in the Balkans would be possible somehow. Zeljko strongly believed in this as well. He used his art as a tool to foster compassion, solidarity, and reconciliation. It is possible to transform and heal divided communities and marginalized segments in society. Zeljko’s work and the artwork produced by others who are part of this event, is certainly a powerful testament to this.

It’s interesting to note that numerous attempts were made to create a formal mechanism, a truth commission, to bring about reconciliation in Bosnia. All of those attempts failed. Usually there is a great deal of attention placed on these kinds of developments – especially on bodies like truth commissions. However, reconciliation has already been fostered at some level, and within the disabled community and beyond it through Zeljko’s work. Yet, there hasn’t been much attention devoted to significant events like these — at least not in the Western media. This is in fact one of the most interesting aspects of my LSN BiH fellowship — examining how reconciliation has been possible in a creative context and through a disability rights framework.

I really look forward to telling you more about the 2008 Balkana Art Colony as Dragana finalizes several logistics issues. Many of the artists have produced absolutely stunning works in the past. Their groundbreaking work conveys a strong message of peace, unity, reconciliation and hope for a better future. You’ll see what I mean when I post their work soon. Perhaps I may even get the opportunity to interview Zeljko!

LSN BiH