First Children's Embassy in the World - Medjashi

Initiative For Better Mutual Understanding 

The lack of communication and the overburden with prejudices among the high-school students of Macedonian and Albanian nationalities, can be seen more and more often in the everyday conflict situations at the high-schools, as well as outside them, among young people in general.

In order to provide space for non-viloent communication, the First Children Embasssy in the world - Medjashi, initiated a new project that contains the following two components that will contribute to improving the communication among high-school students of Macedonian and Albanian nationality at the medical school in Skopje:

-         educational and organizational component that includes training for part of the peadagogical staff and establishing an informal net of teachers for non-viloent conflict analysis

-         active component for communication, that includes organizing workshops for the high-school students and various student-initiated activities.

From 27 June to 04 July 2003, at the Radika Hotel in Mavrovo, a training session in the field of non-viloent conflict analysis was organized. Twenty teachers of Macedonian and Albanian nationality from the medical scool in Skopje, took part at the training. Some of the training's goals were: development of the interethnic dialogue and the mutual trust and communication; development of the awareness of human rights by developing the awareness of the minority rights and the right of diversity; development of the participants' sensibility for direct and structural violence; constructive conflict management in order to prevent the the violence, in the form of non-violent conflict analysis, encouraging the participants' constructive engagement in the process of building the interethnic cooperation at the medical high-school and wider.

The training team included: Blerim Jasari (Centre for Balkan Cooperation - Ljoja, Tetovo); Ana Bitoljanu (Medjashi Embassy); Nenad Vukosavljevik (Centre for Non-vilent Action - Belgrade) and Gordana Pirkovska - Zmijanac (FCEW Medjashi - Skopje).

This project was financed by the Institute for Sustainable Communities and the United States Agency for International Development.