My name is Oleg and for my IDS co-op placement I have found myself a placement in Bosnia with Napredak Futura (loosely translated as The Effort to Progress in the Future). Napredak is a centuries old Croatian organization that aims to improve the social-economic conditions of the region. I will be staying at the Center for Peace and Culture in Northern Bosnia, near the Croatian boarder, which is the headquarters for the Napredak’s Green Oasis project which is what I will be working on.
The primary goal of the Green Oasis project is to promote small scale organic farming in the Posavinian boarder region of Croatia and Bosnia through education, technical support and inter-organizational capacity raising. These activities are funded by the European Union and should help to breath life back into the gentrified post-war agricultural system of the region.
The region boasted its highest historical levels of production in the 1980′s under Yugoslavia’s state lead worker self-managed agricultural co-operatives. However this regime was replaced through the Dayton Agreement during the Civil War in the 1990′s with an inefficient system based on neoliberal values. Green Oasis therefore, to my knowledge, is an international effort to create and aid aspiring small scale farmers to help the region cope with reduced government support from its failed state as well as Bosnia’s now inferior position in international trade.
- Oleg