ANP successfully conducted the second training phase with its current participants of the “Dealing with the Past (DWP)” project. From 18th to 23rd of February the participants practically learned about the variety of their individual identities and its collective formation. Furthermore, four important aspects of DWP (justice, truth, forgiveness and reconciliation) were discussed in depth. An extensive presentation about situation in South A
frica, where on the one hand DWP is taken very serious but on the other hand social division among the population remains very strong, gave a good impression why participant’s contribution in documenting the past is very meaningful for Kosovo. However, a discussion initiated by the introduction of the theoretical concept of positive peace made clear that the sustainability of peace in Kosovo goes beyond DWP, an integrative society has to get build in many fields of society and remains a challenge for everyone in daily life.
Nevertheless, DWP in Kosovo society is one key issue on the path towards an integrative society based on human rights. The willingness of the participants to document their personal stories in ANP’s DWP project was reaffirmed by many participants during this training. In order to reinforce this courage of ANP’s participants during the training, next to a wider context of DWP, ANP empowered the participants to psychologically open up stories from the past, they never talked about before. The training included methods to reflect in depth on emotions, describe and discuss better and more detailed about them, and deal with stress that might appear from the acceptance of heavy emotions. They could practically learn to understand their own personal body functions triggered by emotions as well as several techniques how to calm down after having emotions that are very strong.
Altogether, 21 people from diverse communities in a created safe space were working on heavy topics for six days in a good atmosphere in Durrës, Albania. Everything was conducted in Albanian and in Serbian language to ensure the full participation possibility for everyone in this multi-ethnic training group. Everyone coming to Durrës with ANP could gain from this experience and everyone will bring back something to Kosovo’s society, joining the path towards stable peace.