TC in Bosnia and Herzegovina

As human beings we tend to organize our experiences in story form. This can be seen particularly in conflicts at communal, regional, national and international levels where conflicts are not described as clinical dissections naming the constitutive elements but as structured wholes in the form of narratives. These narratives have been rehearsed and elaborated repeatedly by participants in a conflict and form an integral part of a conflict just as much as physical factors such as scarcity of resources or physical violence.

The aim of this project is to acquire key competencies in understanding how stories that frame social experience are formed. Additionally participants will receive training to work with young people in conflict to help them to re-frame their stories and allow for new possibilities for dialogue and conflict transformation.

The project consists of two stages:

Stage 1: Storytelling

Storytelling is an intrinsic part of the human experience and is an important way in which we organize our experience of the world. Understanding how human beings create and use different stories is important because it provides participants with the tools to understand and interact with the social world around them. This will empower participants to think critically on the narratives that surround them in their personal and professional lives and to understand that these stories are not necessarily set in stone and have the potential to be rewritten.

These skillsets will enhance participants’ employability and professional practice, as great story telling is important for diverse sectors such marketing but also for social professions such as youth work. Particularly youth work that is strained with local, community, national, or international conflict.

Stage 2: Narrative Conflict Mediation:

Building on the skills acquired in stage 1 this section of the training will focus on and hone the story-telling skills to specifically engage people who are part of a conflict and to use the techniques of narrative conflict mediation to examine possibilities for more creative and nuanced understandings of old stories which allow for new possibilities for conflict resolution to occur.