In an age of conflicts and confrontations, 100 years after the start of World War I, organizers of Sarajevo Peace Event want to appeal for a culture of peace and to stand up for peace, disarmament, civil conflict resolution and non-violence, as well as social and ecological justice.
URI Europe took part in this important event and organized a workshop under the theme of "A Culture of Peace and Nonviolence," together with Balkan as a Soul Bridge CC and Europe Youth Leadership CC.
On a sunny Sunday morning, 8th of June, in Sarajevo, 20 participants from all over the world took part in this two-hour workshop exploring themes of building peace and mitigating violent conflict in local communities and beyond.
As URI Europe’s Assistant Coordinator, I opened the workshop with a brief introduction to URI before Vjekoslav Saje from Balkan as a Soul Bridge CC offered a brief history of URI in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He reminded participants that conflict is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it is not violent conflict, posing an opening question for a short Appreciative Inquiry: "When and how did you find inspiration for peaceful solutions?"
The workshop aimed to tap into participants’ spiritual energies, building on the experiences of both individuals and communities. Messages and reflections of peace were produced during a creative session which included each participant designing a flower, which fitted together to form a shared peace tree.
A short presentation by friend of URI Laurie Marshall from the Create Peace Project cumulated in participants completing the phrase, "What if together we…" The contributions from this workshop will go together with those of hundreds of school children and other participants from across Sarajevo to create a community artwork symbolising strength, democracy and togetherness.
In the final part of the workshop an interfaith "World Café," which was facilitated by Elisabeth Lheuer from AUDIR CC and Matthew Youde, Youth Leadership Program Coordinator, asked participants to reflect on the following questions:
- How do we avoid violent conflicts?
- How can faiths help build peace?
- What are the obstacles for peace?
- What can we do in our communities to build peace?
Engaging conversations and inspiring ideas ensued.
At the end, all participants received flower seeds to plant in their countries in the name of peace and they were encouraged to share photos of their future flowers promoting the idea of peace and harmony.
After a successful workshop, the team from URI Europe, together with the Europe Youth Leadership CC, continued to reflect on these important themes over a shared lunch.
The peace event included more than 100 workshops, roundtables and cultural events that brought together several thousand people from around the world and it was a great opportunity for promoting URI, sharing ideas, experiences and networking.
The URI workshop was very notable in that some ideas and conclusions from the workshop were presented at the final plenary session of Peace Event, showing that we are the change that we want to see in the world.
