Coffee Festival Coming Soon

What is common for all communities in the region of Mitrovica? Drinking coffee. Therefore, our next community event, following the marking of Earth Day, will be a coffee festival on the main bridge.

“This event will bring people together like it was once”, said Fehmi Ferati, Cohesion Circle member when Reconciliation and Conflict Transformation non-formal group gathered on Tuesday to plan another community activity.

As it is our practice, in the spirit of cooperation and reconciliation, most of the activity planning was entrusted to our community representatives who helped us plan what kind of a message we want to send with the festival, what kind of engaging activities to plan and how to ensure proper visibility of the festival.

“Our goal is to make a traditional yearly event and to show the bridge as a place where communities come together”, said Milivoje Raičević, CMB’s Communication Officer, at a workshop in Vila Vlahia.

NSI Project Manager, Marko Milenković added that the festival should strive to send a strong message of inter-ethnic cooperation and friendship and encouraged the participants to share their ideas on how best to achieve this goal.

We are excitedly starting the preparations, and happy to have support from Cohesion Circle community members who share the goal of bringing communities together.

Cohesion Circle is comprised of individuals from different backgrounds, the majority from Albanian and Serbian communities but also Bosniak and Ashkali, they are also entrepreneurs, religious leaders, youth, civil society activists, etc.

See you soon on the main bridge to drink coffee and tea, eat local treats, listen to music, and feed the duck. We will keep you entertained and respect the epidemiological measures.

Reconciliation and Conflict Transformation is implemented by CBM and partners Youth Initiative for Human Rights – Kosovo and New Social Initiative, with the support of the American People through the USAID in Kosovo.

Let’s save the Planet!

Earth Day is approaching, it is celebrated on April 22, and we invite you to join us to mark this day under the slogan “Save the planet”.

The action starts on April 19 and will last throughout the week. It is organized by NGO CBM, with partners from Youth Initiative for Human Rights Kosovo and New Social Initiative, as part of Reconciliation and Transformation of Conflict activity supported by the American people through USAID in Kosovo.

As part of the action, between April 19th and 22nd, 12 trees will be donated to 7 municipalities in the region of Mitrovica – a modest contribution a symbolic reflection of the importance of environmental issues. The trees will be planted by an informal group of citizens from 7 municipalities of the region of Mitrovica. The locations where the trees will be planted were determined in cooperation with the local authorities and the planting schedule is as follows:

April 19 – planting in Leposavić and Zvečan
April 20 – planting in Zubin Potok,
April 21 – planting in Vushtrri and Skenderaj
April 22 – planting in southern and northern Mitrovica

On Thursday, April 22, a panel discussion is also planned along with the ceremony to mark Earth Day. Everyone present will have the opportunity to hear the most important concerns regarding environmental issues from:

Mr. Hysen Durmishi – Deputy Minister, Ministry of Environmental Protection and Physical Planning
Mrs. Zorica Timotijević – expert in ecology, environmental protection and spatial planning, Leposavić municipality
Mr. Omar Siddique – Head of Office and Chief Technical Advisor, UN-Habitat Kosovo
Mrs. Mrika Nikqi – Environmental activist & the youngest female in the world to climb all the Seven Summits
Mrs. Jelena Đokić – Senior Lecturer for the courses in Environmental Management at IBCM College
Mrs. Albana Berisha – Environmental activist

The week of activism was planned in consultations with Cohesion circles at a workshop organized last month. Read about that in Cohesion Circle Workshop: Laying out plans for “Save the Planet” action (hyperlink).

To join us, please fill in the application form on this link: https://cutt.ly/avhMOel

Cohesion Circle Workshop: Laying out plans for “Save the Planet” action

Environmental degradation and climate change challenges remain a serious issue for Kosovo authorities while “air quality continues to pose a major threat to health”, found the European Commission in their 2020 Kosovo Report. To considerably step-up ambitions towards a green transition, Kosovo needs both political will and public pressure. The latter is on the increase according to UNDP Public Pulse Brief XX, but the public awareness on the right to live in a healthy environment and potential environmental threats is still below 50%, especially when it comes to the minority communities (below 35%).

In the region of Mitrovica however, the preservation of the environment requires another type of political will – the will to establish interethnic and institutional cooperation between the neighboring municipalities, especially those with different ethnic groups in the majority.

With this in mind, Reconciliation and Conflict Transformation (RCT) team organized a workshop with the members of the Cohesion Circle from seven municipalities of the region of Mitrovica to discuss the plans to mark Earth Day – how to do it, which message to send, who to engage.

“The air we breathe doesn’t know the ethnicity. All communities need clean air, and we all need to make the difference collectively, and this initiative is a good start”, said one of the members of the group, Fehmi Ferati.

His powerful statement resonated among other participants who agreed that action branded “Save the Planet” needed to reflect a unanimous message – that we need to act, and we can do a lot!

A young female activist Jovana Jaćimović also reflected on the importance of educating youth.

“Youth needs to be made aware through workshops that there are alternatives to products that are in everyday use and that cause less pollution – tote bags instead of plastic bags, refillable bottles, etc”.

Another young female with a passion to make a change, Nora Prekazi, stated that communities need events, platforms to share messages in peace and think about the consequences of living in polluted areas.

“A simple thing like a street concert would attract people to stop by and talk to us about making a change”.

Other ideas put forward by yet another female activist and a member of the Cohesion Circle, Mevlude Skuroshi, implied a long-term commitment. She shared concerns about the seriousness of “the environmental changes happening as we speak” and laid out the idea of creating a space for greenhouses and the production of seeds and different types of products that could be distributed to local communities and later on planted.

“This will have a catalytic effect and contribute to sustainable communities”, she believes.

Regardless of the individual ideas on what should be done, members of the Cohesion Circle agreed that institutions play important role in addressing environmental issues and have to be held accountable. For this same reason, the participants found it crucial to include local government representatives in the implementation of the action to mark Earth Day.

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