CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VIII (1) ContemporaryEurasia81 | Page 113

BEATA BOEHM
Pakrac” spent six hours daily on clean-up activities in the destroyed city. By
virtue of these regular daily contacts, many friendships sprang up between
them and the local population.
In afternoons the volunteers worked to establish a “Youth
Programme”. The goal of this project was to discourage local youth from
engaging in ethnically hostile acts by involving them in inter-active learning
and to motivate them to gain a better understanding of the “other” side and
to reconcile with it by having them participate in constructive after-school
activities. A youth club was opened, offering a broad variety of activities
that also took into account the psychological and social needs of young
people affected by the war. The Youth Programme was implemented in
collaboration with the local secondary school.
The project had been planned for both sides of the ceasefire-line. Due
to supposed safety concerns for the volunteers, while the city was divided
into two parts, it could only be implemented with a great degree of difficulty
and only after initial obstruction from the local authorities. This led to a high
degree of frustration among the eager, largely very young and inexperienced
international volunteers. Some of them even received death threats from
their newly won Croatian friends when returning from deployments on the
Serb side. In some cases, they were met with open hatred, something they
had not been prepared for.
By 1995 more than 250 volunteers from 19 different countries had
come and worked with the population in Pakrac. By 1997 their number had
grown to 500. They spent a total of 15,000 hours cleaning and repairing
houses, thereby supporting the CARE “Reconstruction Fund” with US$
22,000. The Funds Committee credited this amount to socially
disadvantaged families, selected by the community’s social services, in order
to help them re-pay their loans. The connection to the CARE project
provided an important synergetic effect for the reconstruction programme.
The most important contribution of the young and untrained
volunteers, who were extremely helpful, trusting and untouched by
nationalist sentiments, was their ability, through their idealism, enthusiasm
and commitment during joint activities with the population of Pakrac, to
awaken and strengthen interest in intercultural and participatory learning,
tolerance as well as to diminish prejudices and strengthen “Social
Reconstruction”. Their presence had a therapeutic effect on a population that
had been traumatized by war. Their programmes appealed foremost to the
young people of Pakrac.
By 1995 they had spent approximately 10,000 hours of their “leisure
time” on social activities, such as language instruction, sports activities and
children’s events, the programming of a weekly local radio programme, in
addition to building a computer network at the school with the aim of
providing students with international contacts. During the pilot phase of this
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