| Paola Lucchesi on Fri, 06 Oct 2000 08:13:55 +0200 |
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| Syndicate: [Balkansunflower-list] Financial Year Report, Activity report Peja/Pec and Activities in Serbia/Montenegro |
From: "wam" <[email protected]> To: "BSF general big Mailing List (E-mail)" <[email protected]> Subject: [Balkansunflower-list] Financial Year Report, Activity report Peja/Pec and Activities in Serbia/Montenegro Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 19:35:50 +0200 Sender: [email protected] Reply-To: [email protected] BALKAN SUNFLOWERS NEWS UPDATE International Volunteers for Social Reconstruction in the Balkans More Information: http://www.balkansunflowers.org Email: [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Financial Year Report Finally we have finished the financial year report April 1999-May 2000, it is a bit long to send via a mailing list, so everybody who is interested to receive it should send an email message to [email protected] and ask for a electronic copy. Peja (Kosovo) In Spring former UCK fighters helped children plant flowers and vegetables in Peja's Peace Garden on land provided by a primary school; this project evolve into a center of activities and then part of Peace Camp Peje (more below). Activities there included preparing the field for planting, watering the garden, and art: the signs painted by the children with names and pictures of vegetables and flowers indicate what has been planted where. A flower shop in the center of Peje was brightened up for a one-week plant sale; children showed plants grown in the garden and made some pocket money. Integrating different levels of local community (school children including children from ethnic minorities and local workers, many of them former fighters) is an important goal behind a simple activity. Art and environmental awareness are the basis for several successful BSF activities in Peje, besides the basic work in transit centers like the Konvikt (started already last summer), Blind School and children's hospital. Although the Arts Center activities are temporarily suspended because the theatre is being renovated, other projects are in full blossom. The Parks renovation is finished now. Three city parks were renovated with extensive clearing of brush and trimming, garbage collection, new playground, tables and benches. The real success story is the opening of the parks to the city, for the full range of activities. From summer 1999 clean-ups, sports and games to Summer 2000 Peace Camp Peje, BSF brought thousands of children in myriad activities into Karagac Park: Rights of the Children Day, Earth Day, Peace Camp Festival, and many free outdoor films were held in the park in past months. Great clean-ups of the Center Park have helped bring environmental awareness to the center of Peje as well. The Urban Environment Awareness Campaign birthed a video program to produce environmental films with teenagers. This is developing into a youth video cente in the middle of Peje. A room to host the project was provided by IRC, connected to the Peje Youth Center. The program directed by talented local manager, Nick Tahirbegolli, has brought a succession of people of outstanding talent to help: Sally Thompson, a BBC Television Director and Jan Kellett, who has also worked at the BBC and studied filmmaking have brought great skill to our volunteer efforts. In August, BSF brought Mark Landsman, award winning children's filmmaker to Peje for a month long program, producing two childre's films: Heart Poem, by the 11-14 year-olds, and Postcards by the 15-20 year-olds. Peje Teens, the video group is now developing three Public Service Announcements, short films on important social concerns. Many of these activities came together in a seven-week summer day camp. Using our mix of arts, play, music, garden, and environmental projects this summer camp focused on two themes: Nonviolence and Weapons Awareness (based on our outstanding winter program in Albania), and Multi-Cultural Understanding and Tolerance. Collaborating with a Czech organization we visited villages, bringing along city children to share programs with them, exploring the meaning of different cultures. Children made masks and costumes, learned songs and dance, and most importantly became comfortable with each other in a multi-ethnic environment. Photography has been included in programs during recent months; now a major workshop is under way involving children from Albanian and Roma families in a collaborative effort. Balkan Sunflowers has been a leader in Peje in environmental education for children. In recent days it is being looked at to provide leadership in tolerance education, based on our summer camp experience and the kinds of programs we have been leading in Peje since last year. The photography program is an important contribution to this month's Youth Week (1-7 October), as is a mural to be painted in the center of Peje, a collaboration of Albanian and Roma youth. The city asked us to develop a Tolerance Curriculum that we expect will get its first field trials during Youth Week. Yugoslavia Due to the political instable situation in the last month in Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) the projects there (in cooperation with SCI International and Peace Center of Praha) are put on ice. We hope that in the next weeks the situation will normalize and that we can consider re-opening. -------------------------------------------------------------------- More information see our website or contact us on our email address: [email protected] DONATIONS: How to Transfer Money to the Balkan Sunflower Account accountnr. 0004075781 on the of Balkan Sunflowers e.V.- Belzig on the Raiffeisenbank Mittelmark e.G. - Belzig, Germany Bankleitzahl (not international swift code) 16062048 International Swiftcode:GENODEF 1BZG ---------------------------------------------------------------- News from the | To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to: Balkan Sunflowers | [email protected] and put in the text body: (the new SunCokret) | unsubscribe balkansunflower-list ---------------------------------------------------------------- More on the project: http://www.ddh.nl/org/balkansunflower ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate to unsubscribe, write to <[email protected]> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe [email protected]