The Effects of War on Individuals and Groups - Finding Hope in the Midst of Destruction

Small Steps and The Peace Academy, with support from Religions for Peace Multireligious Humanitarian Fund, invites you to an online training: “The Effects of War on Individuals and Group(s) - Finding Hope in the Midst of Destruction.”  The training’s two lead trainers and guest are experienced peacebuilders and psychotherapists who have lived through the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

A grant provided for this training allows all participants to join free of charge.

If you are from Ukraine or are an Ukrainian refugee, would like to learn the impact of trauma on an individual and group levels, and are seeking ways to help yourself and others address trauma and embark on the process of healing, please apply! 

Deadline for reserving your place in the training is 3rd of October, 2022.

The training will be held online, via Zoom, in English. 

The goals for the training are:

• interreligious dialogue,
• trauma healing and awareness,
• restoration and care for communities,
• resilience, in the midst of destruction.

The training, workshops and group support sessions schedule is listed below (Central European Time - Sarajevo, 1 hour behind Kiev). 

Participation at all training, workshop, and support group times will be expected, as much as possible. However, given the difficulties of daily life in Ukraine at this time, we understand that exceptions may need to be made.  Our desire is to be flexible and understanding given the current situation, as well as to provide a caring, supportive and safe environment for all participants.

The training will last four days, four hours per day.

The topics that will be covered in the training are:

• defining and understanding trauma;
• the impacts of trauma on individuals and groups;
• resilience as key for survival; and
• transitioning from surviving to thriving.

Workshops will be conducted after the training.  They will be held once a week for four hours, with the first two hours focusing on group debriefing and support and the second two hours on practical application of skills learned in the training with the goal of obtaining tools geared specifically for each topic.

Support groups will be held once a month to provide support to participants as they apply new learnings in their personal and professional life.

Amra Pandžo (Trainer), founder of Small Steps Association, has been on the frontlines of conflict management and rehabilitating vulnerable groups since 1996. She holds a master’s degree in Social Work and is completing her PhD in Security and Peace Studies, in which she focuses on the potential of religions for peacebuilding and rebuilding of torn and divided societies. Amra has years of experience training people in non-violent communication as well as working with educators and institutions to help teach about religion, dialogue and social change. Amra has been active in Religion for Peace for years and has also published her book The Way of Peace, which focuses on peacebuilding and religion. In a TPO Foundation poll, Amra was voted as one of the 11 most influential women who built peace in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Amela Puljek-Shank (Trainer) is the program director at The Peace Academy.  Amela has worked for almost three decades in the field of peacebuilding as a facilitator, trainer, and manager, supervising programs and staff working on peacebuilding and trauma healing in divided societies and overseeing their work with local partner organizations. She has worked in Europe, the Middle East, and beyond, including in BiH, Croatia, Kosovo and Serbia, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Palestine, and Ukraine as well as virtual work during the Covid-19 pandemic with partners in Nigeria and Myanmar. Amela specializes in trauma healing, recovery, worker care, compassion fatigue and burnout. Currently, she works as a consultant to international organizations and focuses on organizational development, capacity building, strategic planning, and developing and leading trainings and evaluation processes. Her publications include “The Contribution of Trauma Healing to Peacebuilding in Southeast Europe” in Peacebuilding for Traumatized Societies (ed. Barry Hart, 2008), “Trauma and Reconciliation” in 20 Steps towards Reconciliation (Center for Nonviolent Action, 2007), and “Journey of Healing” in Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding (Pact Publications, 2003).

Goran Božićević (Guest Speaker) is co-founder and current director of the Miramida Centar – Regional Peacebuilding Exchange in Groznjan-Grisignana (Istria, Croatia). A science teacher by vocation, he has been active in peacebuilding since 1993, working across the post-Yugoslav region since 1996. As a trainer in nonviolent conflict transformation, he works in divided communities and with people with different values, such as in the Pakrac Volunteer Project, which he co-founded and coordinated (1993-1995). In 1996, he co-founded the Centre for Peace Studies in Zagreb, of which he also was the founding director (1996-1999) and where he continues to teach. He has been actively involved in Dealing with the Past issues since 2002, when he started serving as the post-Yugoslav countries’ representative in the Quaker Peace & Social Witness’s Dealing with the Past Programme (2002-2006). He has also been a trainer in six peacebuilding trainings in Ukraine.

We are eager to hear from you, and hope that you will apply to participate in the training. We are ready to answer any questions you may have.

Please send your enquiries, questions, and request to participate in the training to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..