Exercise description

Several large pieces of paper are placed on the floor and each of them has one of the following questions/titles:

• What can I do to contribute to dealing with the past?
• What dilemmas do I have? What fears do I have?
• Who are my adversaries?
• Who are my allies?

Everyone walks up at the same time and writes their answers down or reads what has been written silently. Some time is set aside so that everyone who wants to can take a look at what has been written.

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Type of exercise: Rotating Triplets

Possible questions:

How would you describe the work in your organisation to your neighbour (someone who knows nothing about it)?

What is the motivation behind what I do?

In what way does my work inform social change?

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This exercise unfolds the same way as the Quick Situations exercise but this one is specifically tailored to groups of war veterans.

1. You get a call from an association of veterans of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina to come to the annual commemoration in Srebrenica, with the other members of this group. What do you do?
2. The association of families of those killed in the Tuzla Colon is inviting you to the commemoration of events that took place in Brčanska Malta. What do you do?
3. A joint visit is planned to battle sites in Eastern Slavonia. The host association of veterans receives threats from other veterans’ associations and informs you of this the day before the trip. What do you do?
4. You are planning a gathering of veterans from the region at the hotel Vilina Vlas in Višegrad. Everything is confirmed, but a few days before the gathering is scheduled to begin, you receive credible information from an NGO that during the war the hotel was the site of an organised camp for imprisoning women and that many women were raped there. What do you do?
5. A political party takes credit for your work and states that this is yet another confirmation of their political programme with the following: “This is proof that the entities should be abolished!” What do you do?
6. A representative of the families of victim’s association asks for your permission to address veterans who fought for the other side, and who are coming to visit. What do you do?
7. You are planning a gathering and a press conference. You just learned that one of the guests in your group has just been indicted for war crimes. What do you do?
8. Together you (veterans from all three sides) visit the memorial site of the HVO and, among other things, see pictures of Tudjman and Pavelic exhibited. What do you do?
9. During the visit to an atrocity site in a small town, a meeting is planned with local authorities. A guest appearance of the deputy mayor, who just returned from serving a several months long sentence for war crimes, is announced. What do you do?
10. The association HVIDR from Županja wishes to join the action you are planning, provided that the association of veterans from Serbia excludes the word ‘liberating’ from their name. What do you do?

A review of these situations follows in the plenary.

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Read out a scenario (that simply demands a response) and ask the question: “What do you do?” The participants share their ideas about possible reactions. The goal isn’t to determine the most appropriate or the best response, but to collect a range of possible reactions that can inform participants’ behaviour in certain situations.

Some ideas for the situations:

1. You’ve come back from a seminar attended by people from the former Yugoslavia. You meet with acquaintances who ask you how it went. One of them comments, “You were hanging out with Shiptars* again?!” What do you do?
2. You are at a monoethnic family gathering. There is one person present who is of a different ethnicity. One family member is provoking that person by telling inappropriate jokes (for e.g. “What’s up, Šokica**?”). You notice that the person is having a difficult time. What do you do?
3. At a family celebration, your cousin declares, “All the Serbs left Kosovo voluntarily”. What do you do
4. Graffiti has appeared on a neighbouring building that says “Croats to the reservation!” (or: “Serbs should be hanged! “ or “Bosnians belong in chains!”). What do you do?
5. At work, a colleague complains, “Look at these Albanians: all the rights we gave them and this is the thanks we get!” What do you do?
6. You are at a peace conference. A representative of an association of missing persons’ families says that only victims have the right to engage in peacebuilding. What do you do?
7. You are in a taxi. When the taxi driver learns that you are from Bosnia, he asks, “How are you dealing with all the Muslims?!” What do you do?
8. Your friend is fired from work because of their sexual orientation. What do you do?
9. Your neighbourhood is planning a construction of housing for the Roma community. A

neighbour asks you to sign a petition against the construction project. What do you do?

* A derogatory term for Albanians

** A derogatory term for Croats

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Large pieces of paper, markers

Exercise description

Division into small three groups.

Step 1. Question: What would those who are against these kinds of meetings say to us? List and wrote on large pieces of paper, without any discussion.

Step 2. Each group receives one topic and writes down pros and cons relating to it. The topics are:

–     Forgive but never forget.

–     The people are to blame for the war.

–     Those who fought in the war are today working on reconciliation.

A presentation of the wall newspapers created in step 1 follows and then of the wall newspapers created in step two of the exercise. These presentations inform the discussion in plenary.

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Exercise description

Step 1. Three participants from different communities  are  given  a  task  beforehand  (a  few days)  to  prepare  a  presentation  in  order  to  make other  participants more  familiar  with  the  issues  in their communities (those relevant to the work of peacebuilding). They present what they have prepared and others have the opportunity to ask questions and get clarification.

Step 2. Participants choose one of the presented communities. Three working groups are formed according to chosen local communities (it would be good to have a more or less equal number of participants in each group). They should imagine that they live in the chosen community. Their task is to choose one specific issue relevant to the work of peacebuilding and to develop an approach relating to the issue. Each group receives a handout outlining the task and a series of questions that can help in the course of the work:

“Your task is to choose an issue you will focus on and to develop an approach relevant to this issue.”

Handout with guiding questions:

1. How do you decide on what is the issue? (Why this specifically?)
2. What are your goals?
3. Define the principles of your actions.
4. What are your strengths/weaknesses? Which capacities are you missing?
5. What resources do you use in order to get to know the environment?
6. With whom is it important to establish cooperation? In what way are you doing that? (Who are your potential allies?)
7. How do you want the community to see you? (What kind of image do you want to project?)
8. What are the possible negative side-effects?
9. What concrete steps are you able to carry out? Why these?
10. Three issues that matter to you and are not on the list.

The handout for printing on A4 format is available for downloading here.

Step 3. After completing the work, groups take their place in the hot seat one by one, and present what they did, while the rest of the group asks questions and provides feedback.

Step 4. Everyone has the opportunity to reflect and write down on post-its: What was difficult for you in this task? What dilemmas do you have? Questions that are left unanswered? A brief discussion in plenary follows.

Step 5. Wall newspaper: What insights did you gain about the work in the local community? The wall newspaper is made in the plenary.

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Exercise description

Divide into three groups. Each small group is given two situation scenarios (of the three described below), which they need to examine. They then respond to the questions: How to react and position yourself in this situation? What questions and dilemmas do you have?

After this, groups present the kind of approach they opted for, and a brief discussion follows.

Situation 1: You get an invitation for a guest appearance on a neighbouring country’s national television. The theme of the programme is the process of reconciliation in the region of former Yugoslavia. You accept the invitation and then receive a suggestion from the editors of the show asking you to focus solely on the criticism of your own country during the TV appearance.

Situation 2: You are local CNA partners in organising public presentations of peace work with ex-combatants. You prepare a public forum in your town. A few days before the forum you receive a request from an association of war victims, explicitly demanding that you list them as the speakers in the forum.

Situation 3: Long-term partners from abroad invite you to be part of a large international project (with organisations from Germany, Palestine, Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina). The project is especially important to them because of the money and the future survival of the organisation. You have doubts about the feasibility of the project but accept in order to support the partner organisation. After a year, you are the only ones completing your part of the work. The project is now long over and the main joint product of your work (a manual) was never received, nor is it printed, to the best of your knowledge.

Alternative version

Other examples of situations:

1. You are organising a cross-border action with war veterans in a Bosnian town. Your partner from the local veterans’ association suggests a meeting with the president of the Municipal Assembly and he expects them to support the action. You know that this man has been convicted of war crimes before the Hague Tribunal and that he has served his time. What do you do?
2. You are preparing a screening of a documentary film that promotes peaceful dialogue. You receive an offer from a controversial folk music star whose family members have ties to organised crime to support your activity by showing up at the press conference. What do you do?
3. A foundation that you sent one of your project proposals to writes to you requesting that you clarify your participation in another project that was authored by a long-term partner of yours. You know nothing about this other project and were not consulted in its creation. It turns out that the contents of the other project mostly entails an evaluation of your work and requires skills and experience that only your organisation has. The foundation generally does not give multiple project grants to the same organisations. What do you do?
4. You have been invited to a talk show to present your peacebuilding group. There are two other guests and both are extreme nationalists – an MP from the ruling party who is a former detainee and a handicapped war veteran. The topic is “War and Peace”. The hosts tells you beforehand that she would like to discuss who finances NGO activism. Your pay is twice the average in your country. What do you do?
5. While implementing a project financed by an important donor who is financing some of your activities for the first time there are serious difficulties that prevent you from achieving the goals you have set. In particular, during the training an argument takes place in a workshop and one of the participants leaves the training and eight other people follow them. The training itself is made shorter by three days. While writing out the narrative report you have to decide how transparent you will be in describing the situation. What do you do?
6. During a public appearance in the media you are asked your opinion on another project from your field that you know a lot about because you participated in it and have a very critical opinion of it. The public has a very negative perception of the person leading the project because of their work on documenting war crimes committed by their own side. You know that this person is very aggressive towards employees and treats them badly and is sometimes authoritarian towards partners. When the host asks your opinion about this other project and the person leading it, what do you do?
7. You arrive at a meeting with your colleague, a veteran of the Army of Republika Srpska, in the HVO* association and you see photographs of convicted war criminals on the wall. What do you do?

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Exercise description

This exercise may be carried out together with the exercise Criteria for Activists (“Dub” Island), or independently from it.

Version 1: A piece of paper with the criteria for peace activists from the previous exercise is placed where  it  can  be  seen  everyone.  Discussion  in  the plenary follows: What is realistic to expect from people committed to peacebuilding? What applies to you personally? Which criteria do you personally meet? Which ones can you admit to not having and/or to not wanting to have?

Version 2: After the exercise Criteria for Activists (“Dub” Island), the brainstormed criteria are put on paper (one criterion per sheet of paper). Trainers can add a few that they consider important for the discussion. Participants take one or several papers/concepts, and place them in a barometer with the poles: Excessive expectations and Realistic expectations. These are followed by a discussion: Would somebody change the position of a particular concept in the barometer? Why? (For more information on the large barometer method see p. 64.)

Version 3: This is done independently of the exercise Criteria for Activists (“Dub” Island). The task is for each participant is to write down criteria that peace activists would have to comply with, on several sheets of paper (one criterion per sheet of paper). After that, the exercise unfolds as in version No 2.

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Divide the participants into smaller groups.

Participants develop the idea and plan how to implement peace activities using a catalogue of questions as a basis. Then they present their idea for activities in front of the others and have the chance to receive feedback.

Questionnaire:

Developing the idea

1. Type of activity:
2. Activity duration:
3. Target group:
4. Goal:
5. Team, place, time (if they are know):
6. Short description of the idea that includes answers to the following questions:

• How can you contribute to fulfilling the goal?
• What do you want to achieve? What are the expected results? Short- term and long-term?
• Why did you choose the target group?
• What kind of legitimacy do you have in terms of them?
• Are there aspects of this activity that contribute to peace-building?
• What kinds of dilemmas do I have? Fears?

Planning the implementation

• Resources that I have and that I still need? (strengths and weaknesses)
• What kind of support do you need? Expected support from CNA (kind and amount)?
• Do I see others from this group being involved? How?
• Describe the implementation process (in steps/bullet points)
• Following steps? Make a timeline.
• Make a table with responsibilities and deadlines!

After 40 minutes of small group work, there are presentations. After each presentation you should leave some time for questions from the rest of the group and the team of trainers.

A catalog of questions suitable for printing on A4 format can be downloaded here.

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