Within the “Promoting intercultural dialogue, inclusive and peace education, and prevention of violence among children” activity that is implemented in the Herzeg-Bosnian County with the completion of the school year, also completed were the workshops that were held in the county primary schools with the pupils.

The interactive workshops that included all primary schools from the HBC educated the groups of 10 to 15 pupils on the topics such as violence prevention, communication, prejudice and stereotypes. The pupils demonstrated their knowledge through the presentations that were held in their schools at the end.

The “Promoting intercultural dialogue, inclusive and peace education, and prevention of violence among children” activity is implemented by the NGO Genesis Project from Banja Luka within the “Applying the Human Security Concept to Stabilize Communities in Canton 10” project funded by the UN Trust Fund for Human Security and implemented by the UN agencies in BiH (UNICEF, IOM, UNHCR and UNDP).

Within the activities, a series of the meetings were held by the expert groups which consisted of the principals, school counselors, teachers and representatives of the relevant institutions. These meetings resulted in the “Practical application of the Protocol of conduct in cases of violence in primary schools in Canton 10” publication, which was distributed to the teachers.

The activities do not stop there and the one-minute movies will be made in all of the municipalities until the end of the summer. The children and young people will use these movies to point out the problems they face in their local community. In each of the municipalities the movies will be presented at the round tables where the present people will get an opportunity to provide their comments and opinions.

Within this activity by the beginning of the new school year the teachers and parents will have the opportunity to get educated through the training courses which will be held by the Genesis Project coordinators. First of all, there were two training sessions in Bukovica and Tomislavgrad, and what it was like you can read in the report that was made by the UNICEF BiH photojournalist, which was published on the Wall of children’s wishes: http://www.zasvakodijete.ba/trening-o-prevenciji-nasilja-boljom-komunikacijom-do-bolje-prevencije/

Here is the reportage:

The “training for the teachers and parents on the prevention of violence” was held on Friday the 19th of June in Bukovica near Tomislavgrad. Before that the same training sessions were held in Glamoc and Tomislavgrad.

The training was attended by the teachers from the „Fra Mijo Čuić“ primary school, from the village of Bukovica near Tomislavgrad, from the central and from the eight branch schools. Through an interactive workshop, with the active involvement, the participants were able to learn the additional skills in communication, conflict resolution and prevention of peer violence.

“Unlike the seminars where we have lecturers and only listen to the lectures, we were able to take part in the interesting exercises, some of which we would be able to use in the teaching process and working with children in the future and that will be helpful to us and our pupils. Some of the skills will be useful for the contact with the parents too as well as handling the possible cases of violence,” was the opinion of the training participants.

The training was conducted by Azra Talić, a professor of education and psychology, and Ljubisa Vasic, a primary school education professor, who were introducing the participants with the essential concepts, methods of formation and recognition of bullying, either mental or physical, the recognition of the ‘sophisticated’ forms of violence, and they also presented a number of exercises from the communication and conflict resolution field, and some of them will be used by the teachers in work with students.

Thus, in one of the exercises the teachers Armina Bagaric and Nevenka Ćuić were supposed to show the concepts of ‘Red Riding Hood’ and ‘jealousy’ through mimicry, then in the larger group they had the opportunity to go through the retelling a story activity, then hearing test and the ‘Country Lemonia’ workshop which was particularly interesting to the participants. Firstly they were divided into four groups which should write the anthem of the imaginary country Lemonia, become Lemonians and then decide which of the immigrants would they grant asylum to and why among the oranges, potatoes, peanuts and peppers …

“It is very important to talk about the topic of bullying regardless of that many may claim that it does not exist in our environment that much. These trainings are very important for us teachers as we are reminded of some things and some new things are learned and applied, ” said the teacher of the Croatian language and literature Marija Papic. School counselor Lucia Krajina says that much of what she has seen on the workshop can be applied in working with children.

“It is also useful for teachers to know how to behave in the case of some severe forms of violence occurring, but also to recognize some of the forms of violence that are hidden. We have been doing a survey in the central one and eight branch schools, the pupils did not complain of the severe forms of violence, they mainly complained about the mockery and some minor provocation, “says Lucia.

“We live in a small community, especially where the branch schools are, so we all know each other or are related to each other, therefore if some problems even happen that is still solved in the direct contact with the parents,” said Janja Zoric.

As Ms. Azra Talic said, and most participants agreed, that for example there are no home room classes at all in the plans, during which that can be discussed with the pupils, that in recent years, there is less time for teaching students the communication skills.

“The curriculum does not pay enough attention to a very important life skill – the communication, the skill that helps avoiding conflict situations and handling cases of violence,” says Azra Talic.

After the training, the participants were also given the “Learning to live together” manual and the “Practical application of the Protocol of conduct in cases of violence in primary schools in Canton 10” publication in which the procedure in cases of bullying is described in detail.

The overall objective of the “Promoting intercultural dialogue, inclusive and peace education, and prevention of violence among children” activity within the “Application of the concept of human security in order to stabilize communities in Canton 10” project is to promote the intercultural dialogue, inclusive and peace education and prevention of violence among children in Canton 10 by strengthening the capacity and the development of the appropriate methods through the active participation of all stakeholders – students, teachers and parents, as well as the representatives of the Ministry of Science, Education, culture and Sport of the Canton 10.