Making huge differences

 

By Liza Pol

 

With the beginning of July in sight, our virtual trip to Kosovo has come to an end. With hardly any knowledge of Kosovo, I joined Peace Lab. This lack of knowledge was quickly tackled by Anne in the first week, in which we read and gave presentations about the history of Kosovo. The two following weeks were filled with meetings with interesting organisations and people. It is difficult to point out one or two favourite meetings, but I will give it a shot anyway. 

 

Firstly, I greatly enjoyed the meeting with Elizabeth Gowing from The Ideas Partnership, an NGO that helps people with a bottom-up approach. I was very inspired by the story of how The Ideas Partnership started and their motto “If you learn, you teach and if you get, you give”. I am hoping to actively apply this in my own life as well. During Peace Lab, I spent about half the month at my parents’ home and even though I told them about our meetings every dinner, I only stopped talking about this meeting when everyone had already emptied their plates, as an illustration of my enthusiasm. Secondly and perhaps not unsurprisingly, I thought the meeting with the Prime Minister was amazing. It was very special to be able to meet him and ask our questions.

 

During the meetings and the last week, we worked on our projects. Together with Birte, I created an Instagram page. We got our inspiration from the page @humansofny, where portraits of people are posted accompanied by one of their stories. We wanted to create something similar but feature people from Kosovo and organisations active in Kosovo. Every post was written from a personal narrative. We found the people in our posts through Instagram and the meetings organised by Anne de Graaf and Nini Pieters. 

 

We are not fully finished with our project as I am writing this, but I can say that I have enjoyed working on it a lot! Each of our interviewees was incredibly kind and open to share their stories with two more-or-less strangers from Amsterdam. The Instagram statistics tell us that we have reached over 300 people and we have gained 71 followers, which I think is decent for such a short period. Our page will stay public and online so that people can still view the photos and stories after this academic year has officially ended. The pictures added to this blogpost are some of the pictures we posted along with the stories. Please check out our Instagram page for more pictures and these stories! This is the link:

 https://www.instagram.com/peaceofkosovo/.

 

From our classes and the time dedicated to the project, I have learned many things. Most importantly, my knowledge about peacebuilding has improved. I used to think of it as this big, vague concept that mostly the UN was occupied with, but I now see the importance of individuals and local organisations in building sustainable peace. It became clear to me that bottom-up approaches and grassroots initiatives make huge differences. One of our interviewees even told us that her parents’ attitude towards groups of people has changed because of her choice to go to a mixed university. This is just an example, but I think it shows how one decision or action can change a lot of things. We have met many inspiring people this past month and they have each motivated me to pursue a career in something I believe in as well, I hope you have enjoyed reading the Peace Lab 2021 blog!

Voices

By Hareem Ali 

Ida and I got the chance to work together for our final Peace Lab Kosovo creative project. We brainstormed ideas on what creative direction to take and concluded that we were both really interested in using experimental editing and working on a short documentary. For us, the idea was to convey the hardships within Kosovo but also the hope for peacebuilding and reconciliation with aid of voices of youth, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. 

Therefore, the question was how different Kosovo and Serbian voices could add to the future peacebuilding and reconciliation in the country. We were inspired by the meetings we had during our virtual field trip to Kosovo with various organisations and their representatives. I remember feeling very inspired by the personal stories and the hardships especially, from organisations including Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN), Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR), and Centre for Equality and Liberty (CEL). 

In the meetings they mentioned the importance of involvement of present and future voices of youth, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community in peacebuilding and reconciliation. Later, we got together and talked about the outline of the short documentary and what we could include in it. Our idea was to search for found footage from the internet about the history of Kosovo, the Milosevic regime, and the Kosovo War. We also planned on conducting online interviews via Zoom with the above-mentioned organisations to hear more about their perspective on the importance of voices of youth, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. 

Then we sent out emails to KWN, YIHR, and CEL and all of them very kindly agreed to the interviews. Unfortunately, the interview with CEL could not take place because of the upcoming Pride Week and their busy schedule, which we completely understand and respect. Therefore, even though initially we wanted to include all three perspectives in the documentary, we could only include those of youth and women due to time constraints. Soon Ida and I then started finding footage on the internet, conducting interviews over Zoom, and editing it all together. I think Ida and I worked well as a team, it was an amazing learning experience, and I am incredibly pleased with our final Peace Lab project.

Moreover, I see a tremendous difference in myself and my knowledge since starting Peace Lab. When I first registered for the course, I knew absolutely nothing about Kosovo. I did not know where Kosovo was, had no idea about its history, nor had ever met anyone from the country. Getting a crash course on Kosovo’s history and culture during the first week of the course, meeting with various organisations and representatives working in Kosovo, and doing research on Kosovo for the final project, I learned a lot and have gained a ton of knowledge and experience concerning the country. 

Another thing that changed for me since I started Peace Lab has to do with my future studies and the profession I plan to pursue. I have mainly focused on Public Health at Amsterdam University College, but have taken courses like Human Rights & Human Security and Peace Lab with Anne de Graaf out of sheer interest and coincidence. These courses and the experience I gained from them now have me wondering about my original plan to do a master’s in public health. I am already planning and looking forward to internships with some of the organisations we met during our virtual tour, in order to gain more insight and experience and then I will see where I want to take that in the future.

I have also noticed the confidence I gained to speak up and actively participate with every meeting and learning how and what type of questions to ask. Our meeting with Prime Minister Kurti during the virtual tour of Kosovo has especially been the highlight of Peace Lab for me and my favourite meeting so far. Meeting a Prime Minister is something I never thought could happen in my life, but I am so grateful for the opportunity. Initially I found it slightly nerve wracking because it all felt so formal when the Prime Minister joined, with their official setting and the flags on both sides of the room. It was something I had only seen on television. I felt nervous but oddly also prepared. Having participated in prior meetings, I knew what questions I wanted to ask Prime Minister Kurti and how to ask them as well. Before Peace Lab, I could not have imagined meeting with such organisations and a Prime Minister and asking the kind of questions that I did. Here is a picture of our wonderful meeting! Definitely getting this one printed.