First off, I am sorry if you read my last post yesterday or this
morning... I meant to save it as a draft but it accidentally posted and there
were so many mistakes because I was still working on it... Sorry! It is all
fixed now!
In the beginning of the week we visited with the Zoran Dindic Foundation. The Zoran Dindic Foundation is a foundation
dedicated to Zoran Dindic who started the Democratic Party in Serbia was the Prime
Minister from 2001 until 2003 when he was assassinated. He was a pretty astounding person and
virtually gave up his life to create a more democratic Serbia. The foundation promotes greater economic
advancements through international internship programs for college graduates. During the meeting with the Zoran Dindic
Foundation the woman asked if we had hear for Zoran prior to arriving in Serbia
and sadly most of us had not. Then
she asked if we had heard of Slobadon Milosevic (I explain him below if you do
not know who he is but in short he is a dictator) and many of us had. She then made the point… It is sad to
see how much emphasis is put on the “bad guys” yet the good guys are not
recognized nearly as much, which is true and really disappointing.
After the meeting with the Zoran Dindic Foundation a group of us
took a trip to Ada Lake to go swimming! The lake was fun
and it was nice to swim after being in extremely hot weather for the last 3
weeks!
'Pura Vida' in Serbia?!?! ... Costa Rica keeps popping back up!
For the last 3 days we have had 7 hour days training with a
organization called CANVAS. Canvas formed out of the OTPOR (the word for
resistance in Serbian) student group.
OTPOR was a non-violent group that successfully over threw Slobadon
Milosevic’s regime. Milosevic was
the President of Serbia from 1989-1997 and had a large role in the fall of
Yugoslavia because of his Serbian nationalistic polities… that is the short
story. Canvas now trains other
groups around the world to help them form their own non-violent movements
against their government. It is
pretty inspiring to see how influential a small group of people can be and how
they can make a small idea to grow.
Training our group was a little different than what the trainers were
used. Usually they train people
with a strong desire to over throw their dictator and the people usually do not
have beyond a high school education.
This made the training easier yet harder for them because we did not
need to go over terms or concepts like they do when they train other groups. However, when it came to finding
something that we wanted to change in our government we thought of, healthcare
system, college tuition, policies on illegal immigrants (in favor of
immigrants) and policies on the war on drugs, which turned into the
legalization of marijuana… none of which were very compelling movements. It is not like Obama is a dictator and
we were all passionate about over throwing him. This made it harder to complete some of the parts of the
training, especially because we are not experts on the types of changes that we
come up with. But over all it was
a really great experience!
Dinner at the Mexican Restaurant! ... I can't stay away from rice and beans ... and the margaritas!
Stephanie and I at the Mexican Restaurant
My 'Artsy' picture of the city and our Margaritas!
