Evaluation of the dialogue projects in the Balkans
Keep on talking! That is the title of an evaluation of the Nansen Dialogue Network’s initiatives and efforts in the Balkans, done by researchers at the Christian Michelsens Institute (CMI). The report is from 2008 but it is highly relevant ten years after. The Nansen Dialogue Centers in the Western Balkans are still working on inclusion, trust, and better communication, understanding and cooperation.
Read the report “Keep on Talking! Review of the Nansen Dialogue Network in the Western Balkans.”
Dialogue as a method
The sustainability and continuity of the work is highlighted as one of the main factors for value and effect of the work. Dialogue is about people coming together to understand each other more, to become visible for the other. Not necessarily to find the whole truth, but to build relations between people. Nansen Dialogue seminars gave potential leaders the essential life experience and today many of them are in positions where they can contribute to creating solutions. Hopefully this experience is important to include different groups of people in the solutions that are made.
Steinar Bryn, senior advisor at the Nansen Center for Peace and Dialogue, who has been involved in the dialogue projects in the Balkans since the early beginning in 1995 says: “People’s respect and trust in me, is not because of what I say or what I do, but the fact that I never give up.”
Read more about dialogue here.