ROM and Trebinje and an unexpected meeting

 Ljilja and I travelled down to Trebinje to take part in some of the ROM conference on peacebuilding that was taking place there. It is a two week seminar, but we were only able to come for 2 days. But we lucked out that they took the offical photograph while we were there: 

We also caught some of friends being the speakers - Mirela and Bryan from Sarajevo. Bryan has been a part of our Faith and Conflicts and Mirela is also part of the board for EUS (InterVarsity), so it was good to catch up with them as well.

We really enjoyed the brief time that we were able to be a part, but we spent the rest of our time in Trebinje writing up project plans for our sponsorship project. Trebinje is a wonderful place to do that in, as you can go for walks to help refresh your mind in beautiful scenery and also, Ljilja's mom does all the cooking 😉

And then unexpectedly, while we were still there, my friends from South Africa, the Homanns, let me know they were were coming to stay in Cavtat, which is about 45 minutes away from Trebinje! I hadn't seen them since 2019 as they had moved during Covid to stay in the UK so weren't in SA when I was there this last time. I had zoom meetings in the morning, so could only go around lunchtime to go spend some time with them in the sea before heading back before dark, but it was so fun to see them and catch up! 

Montenegro Seminar

One of the organisations that we have been working with since 2008, is the Finnish organisation, Fida. We have a Child Sponsorship project through them where children are sponsored mostly from Finland to help them with school supplies, etc for their schooling. Previously, they had more funding from the Finnish Government and so held seminars every year for their partners in the Balkans. Since 2015, they have had a different way of funding their projects, and so these seminars didn't happen. 

Now, they have done a reorganisation, and so to help with some of those changes, they decided to have a seminar where we can learn altogether about the way things will be working from now on. It affects us, as there will be changes to the way that we will be doing the reporting in the future. It was great to be able to see some of the people we used to see each year again, and learn more about the new way of doing the reporting for our Child Sponsorship projects. 

The seminar was organised by our good friend, Sina, and as we were from three places in Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo and Albania, and Montenegro seemed to be a good place where we could all meet: