Bridging Balkan divides

The FAF's peace-through-the-arts programme has been a roaring success

By CNN's Sarah Sultoon

LONDON, England -- Students from throughout the Balkans are to join a U.S.-organised exchange programme which uses art, music and drama to promote shared positive experiences in the troubled region.

The six-day Balkan Youth Reconciliation Seminar Series (BYRSS) will held in Romania next week and plans to unite about 50 young adults, half from the Balkans and half from the U.S., western Europe and Russia.

Co-ordinated by the Friendship Ambassadors Foundation (FAF), a U.S.-based charitable organisation, the scheme aims to "encourage conflict resolution and peace-building," through artistic and cultural activity.

The participants will stage a show called "Roadworks," in which different "tribes" who meet one another as they travel through a fictional town come together as a society by the end.

"Eventually they will form one melange of cultures, tentatively called "Balkania," and decide to move forward together…driven by new regional concerns and mutual co-operation," project director Szilvia Agoston said.

A flagship partner of UNESCO's Decade for a Culture of Peace -- a U.N. sponsored initiative -- BYRSS aims to give participants the practical tools, skills and knowledge to work for peace in their home countries.

"The idea is based on people from different cultures and backgrounds gathering to repair the roads, in this case, the cultural roads that can unite us all," Agoston said.

The programme coincides with the U.N. World Youth Forum in Senegal, west Africa, and parts of the performance will be broadcast worldwide via the Internet.

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The FAF's executive director, Patrick Sciarratta, is convinced the process of art and cultural exchange can help ease hostilities in the Balkans.

"We bring these young people not to debate but to use culture and the arts as a way to ease ethnic and national tensions," he told CNN. "These are people who feared and hated each other in the beginning but learn to love and respect each other through our schemes."

The programme was run last summer in Bulgaria and earlier this year in Hungary. Agoston described the Budapest scheme as "educating, fun and above all, motivating."

"This project is critical to the future of civil society and youth development in the Balkans," she said.

"We aim to create a new vision of the Balkans where people are united by the bonds of tolerance and true friendship, by the understanding of and respect for a common cultural heritage, and by the appreciation of diversity -- as opposed to hated political will," Agoston said on the BYRSS web site.

Participants in the first two programmes spoke warmly of the effect it had on their lives.

"Meeting so many strangers -- that are now my friends -- has restored my faith in people, a better society and a better tomorrow," said Dajana Ognjanoska, Macedonia.

Ethnic Albanian participant Rovena Aliaj agreed that art and cultural exchange "could perfectly replace the language the politicians use" in the troubled Balkan region.

"There are two faces of the Balkans, one of the mass media reportages full of conflicts and problems, and another of communication and friendship of ordinary young people," Bulgarian participant Denitsa Prodanova said.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Mother Teresa have previously been involved in FAF-sponsored initiatives.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has also been full of praise for the scheme.

"BYRSS brings together so many young leaders of the region to explore ways to promote genuine reconciliation. Only by nurturing cross border communication and understanding can we all realise our dream of a peaceful, democratic and undivided Europe," he said in a letter to the foundation.