We supported the Nansen Dialogue Centre Mostar to scale their work to bring children from different ethnic backgrounds together
The Partner
NDC Mostar has focused its effort on schools, aiming to provide opportunities for children from different ethnic groups to get to know one other, and to play and learn together. In this way, personal experiences and relationships make them less prone to divisive narratives and prejudices.
This is particularly important because in these ethnically diverse and heavily conflict affected parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, children are subjected to segregated schooling (referred to as “two schools under one roof”) and have little to no opportunity to get to know each other. NDC Mostar provides the space for integrated education, trains teachers to conduct such sessions and engages the broader community in joint activities.
Our Support
PeaceNexus worked with NDC Mostar from 2017 to 2022 in view of NDC’s unique positioning in the field of inter-ethnic dialogue and collaboration. We recognised early on that NDC Mostar manages to achieve results in some of the most challenging environments through its extensive experience and quality programmes. However, it was also clear that the organisation could achieve even more with a strategic approach, particularly when it comes to scaling the work and influencing at the policy level.
With this in mind, we accompanied NDC Mostar through a participatory process to:
- Develop a new strategy with ambitious programmatic goals
- Improve internal planning and coordination
- Develop monitoring and evaluation tools to accompany the implementation of the strategy
The Results
NDC Mostar signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with the Herzegovina-Neretva Cantonal Ministry of Education and secured financial support to implement the organisational strategy we helped develop. As a result, NDC Mostar is implementing integrated education and social cohesion projects in new communities, and engages inpolicy dialogue on inclusive education with relevant educational institutions and local authorities.