{"id":934,"date":"2011-11-20T17:17:11","date_gmt":"2011-11-20T22:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/?p=934"},"modified":"2019-02-09T16:48:09","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T21:48:09","slug":"934","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/?p=934","title":{"rendered":"Course for Workers in Areas of Regeneration and Peacebuilding in Vukovar, Croatia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It is now 20 years since the Balkan wars began in 1991. Vukovar was almost completely destroyed in that year.\u00a0 There were atrocities on all sides. When Charles Tauber came in 1995, there were almost no buildings that were not at least partially destroyed.<\/p>\n

Vukovar\u2019s history dates back 6000 years.\u00a0 The first calendar in Europe was found in Vinkovci, 20 kilometers southeast of the town, which is on the Danube and at the crossroads of many travel routes, and which played host to many ethnic groups. Before 1991, there were at least 25 ethnic groups and 10 religions in the region.<\/p>\n

Now, Vukovar has become an icon of nationalism.\u00a0 It is a place to which politicians come and manipulate ordinary people and do nothing.\u00a0 Schools, caf\u00e9s, sports clubs, and health facilities are formally or informally segregated.\u00a0 While people still live next door to one another, they frequently do not speak to one another or do so only formally.\u00a0 People are identifiable by their accents, which they call languages.<\/p>\n

While the town has been about two-thirds rebuilt, there has been virtually no social reconstruction and there is little work going on on healing and reconciliation.<\/p>\n

This fall, we are undergoing a long and difficult period of nationalism.\u00a0 There are many commemorations of events.\u00a0 Politicians come, whip up nationalist sentiments, and leave.\u00a0 This period will continue at least until after the Croatian elections in December.<\/p>\n

The CWWPP\/local group of InterChange is working on these problems, with great resistance.\u00a0 We believe that \u201ceveryone can be a peacebuilder\u201d.\u00a0 We have started a program of sensitization\/public education.\u00a0 Here, we have a problem that people are not used to the concept of civil society.\u00a0 They also think that it is shameful to obtain psychological assistance.\u00a0 Virtually everyone has one or another psychological problem from the war.\u00a0 Drugs are the only treatment available, except for our work.\u00a0 Thus, sensitization of people to talking about their lives and to working together is essential.\u00a0 By creating mental health, we believe that there will be a positive spiral in health and healing.<\/p>\n

Further, we are working on the Course for Workers in Areas of Regeneration (CWIAR).\u00a0 Charles has been giving this course person-to person since the late 1980s to people in The Netherlands and here.\u00a0 It is highly participatory and lasts for about 120 hours, and includes work on communication, psychology, civil society, non-violent conflict transformation, and human rights. The idea is to give people with little or no education in these fields sufficient knowledge, skills, and attitudes to work in their communities.\u00a0 We are now completing the manual for the course.\u00a0 As each module is completed, it will be put onto the CWWPP website (www.cwwpp.org<\/a>) and sent to InterChange members.\u00a0 We are developing an online version of the course. We welcome the participation of members of InterChange in this development, which we feel will help everyone be a peacebuilder.<\/p>\n

Article written by Charles Tauber and Sandra Mari?. Contact Charles and Sandra at cwwppsummer@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is now 20 years since the Balkan wars began in 1991. Vukovar was almost completely destroyed in that year.\u00a0 There were atrocities on all sides. When Charles Tauber came in 1995, there were almost no buildings that were not at least partially destroyed. Vukovar\u2019s history dates back 6000 years.\u00a0 The first calendar in Europe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[28,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":942,"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions\/942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interchange4peace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}