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Allied Initiatives

Help Build Peace in Bosnia

Conflict Resolution Catalysts (CRC) is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to facilitate peaceful coexistence, citizen empowerment and social well-being. CRC supports and develops initiatives that increase the awareness and use of cooperative conflict-resolution processes.

These initiatives are grassroots-based and focus on dialogue, participatory decision-making, reconciliation and cultural understanding. Currently, CRC is focusing on its peacemaking efforts in Bosnia through the People Connection/Hope for the Future Project.

CRC is developing a program by which groups in other countries can form partnerships with its Bosnia-based community peace centers, known as International Centers for Help, Communication and Relationships. The centers are located in both political entities within Bosnia-in Sarajevo and Banja Luka. The Sarajevo center was established in mid-1994 with assistance from CRC as an independent and non-partisan organization of local citizens. A similar community peace center was established in Banja Luka later that year.

The goal of these centers is to help build a new culture of peace and democracy in Bosnia. The Sarajevo organization has initiated many successful programs, including Resolutions Radio, which provides conflict-resolution training to the listening audience in the Sarajevo area. The center also assists with the psychological and social care of children in a local orphanage. In addition, it hosted the U.S.-based "Peace Troupe," which led theater and movement workshops designed to dramatize and resolve interpersonal and community conflicts which are difficult to verbalize. Those trained will, in turn, share this work with others.

Looking ahead, the center plans to initiate a reconciliation and human rights projects with Serbs in the areas of Sarajevo that will soon revert to Bosnian government control. Organizers are also arranging conflict resolution training for business managers and political party activists.

Be a partner for peace! "Adopt" a peace center in Bosnia.

The Adopt-a-Peace-Center program, similar in some ways to sister cities and other international partnerships, is designed to help people in other lands form a better understanding of Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats and to gather concrete support for the operation and development of these centers.

Citizen peacemaking efforts are essential for the successful implementation of the recent peace agreement. All of us now have a precious opportunity to encourage long-term positive change in a country that has suffered so much.

CRC invites you and your group to get involved as much as you can. By exchanging letters with participants in the centers; by establishing a special fund at your office or in your community group for the material expenses of the centers; by lending your expertise as a teacher, small business owner, mediator, psychologist, artist, community organizer, physician; and by donating textbooks, medical equipment, artist supplies, computer equipment-in all of these ways you are building citizen-to-citizen links with the people of Bosnia toward a cooperative future.

CRC director Gary Shapiro can be reached at P.O. Box 836, Montpelier, VT 05601, USA; phone: (802) 229-1165; fax: (802) 229-1166; e-mail: gshapirocrc@igc.apc.org.


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