Elaboration of the theoretical framework and document analysis
In the period March 15 and May 15, I focused on the revision of the theoretical framework for evaluation of peacebuilding, which is based on my master’s project and integrated into the Course on Peacebuilding, which I taught as part of the Peace Studies Program at the Center for Peace Studies. The course provided me with opportunity to validate the evaluation criteria on several case studies from the post-Yugoslav and worldwide practice of peacebuilding. Together with my students, I have conducted the analysis of the National Security Policy of the Republic of Croatia, from the peacebuilding perspective. I have worked on two short articles in Croatian, which present the framework for the purpose of two local publications (”Culture of Peace” a journal of the Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights, Osijek (October 2002) and MIRamiDA peacebuilding manual, Center for Peace Studies, Zagreb. Based on my field research and document analysis, in September 2002, I submitted a case study on the Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights to IPF, for the purpose of a UNDP publishing project on best capacity building practices (while the case study was accepted, I have not received information on whether and where it has been published). The case study is presented on the website Open Society Education Programs - South East Europe, Section Stories – Good Practice/Innovation, http://www.osepsee.net/4-6.html

Establishment of partnerships with local organizations and field research
The process of creating partnerships with more than a dozen local organizations has been instrumental for present and future data collection. I have encountered positive response from every organization which I approached, thanks to past working relationships, good reputation of the Center for Peace studies and most useful references by the staff of STAR network of World Learning, Kosovo and Melissa Stone, Good Governance Advisor in the Office of Prime Minister, Kosovo. However, the process overlapped with field research and technical assistance provided by me on several occasions, requiring a high degree of flexibility and responsiveness (in terms of tasks and time-frames) on my part.

Activities in Croatia
In March 2002, I formalized my partnership with the Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights Osijek (CZMOS), in particular with two community peacebuilding projects – “Volunteers in the Community-building and Peacebuilding processes” (assisting eight communities in Eastern Slavonia and Bosnian Posavina) and “Community-building and Peacebuilding in the Municipality of Okucani,” as well as a newly established training program “Education House” (January 2003) – to which I serve as external evaluator and monitoring and evaluation consultant on an ongoing basis.
Over the past year, in addition to document analysis, I have made five visits to Osijek (observation and input into the participatory process of indicators’ definition for a school mediation project and a cross-border youth peace camp; facilitation of participatory evaluation of two education programs of local volunteers; development of monitoring and evaluation system of the Education House project and facilitation of the participatory evaluation process of the first Training of Trainers in Community Peacebuilding) and four visits to Okucani (observation and input into the development of sets of indicators for two project components; interviews with community leaders and war veterans; facilitation of the workshop on capacity building of the war veterans’ associations and their community involvement). Both projects have been identified as a key case study demonstrating successful peacebuilding practices in the Croatian context. My close involvement with different aspects of the CZMOS’s peacebuilding work, including its educational programs for community volunteers and organizers, has enabled me to gain insight into the interrelatedness of different projects, internal organizational dynamics, access to internal organizational documents and reports and ability to reflect back. None of that, in particular the mutual trust, would have been possible had I not established a collaborative long-term relationship with this central peacebuilding support NGO in eastern Slavonia.
In March, I also established ongoing collaboration with ZAMIRNET, a Croatian NGO committed to the promotion of IT as a social change tool. As a monitoring and evaluation consultant, I have engaged with ZAMIRNET’s project in five post-war communities (Donji Lapac, Kistanje, Obrovac, Drnis and Srb) which combines community activities for youth, women and war veterans revolving around use of IT for economic empowerment and social integration and technical assistance in areas of e-governance, citizen participation and strategic planning to local authorities.
This engagement has enabled me to track various intertwined local initiatives with significant social impact potential, have direct insight into the local staff’s interactions with the computer center users and local officials. My contribution to this initiative has been the enrichment of the monitoring process (primarily based on quantitative indicators) with periodic participatory evaluation of the actual opportunities for social impact of the computer centers’ activities. I have conducted extensive data collection and analysis in July 2002 and January 2003, which has helped the project examine its effects and future activity focus (particularly need to contribute to the local employability). At the same time, it has enabled me to gain detailed insight into the organizational culture and long-term meaningfulness of ZaMirNET’s engagement in community peacebuilding.
Four field visits have also enabled me to make contacts with potential case studies in the region of Knin; in particular the municipality of Biskupija, which is renowned for successful social integration of returning Serbs, domicile Croats and new settlers from B-H. As part of that field research, in early September, I attended a workshop for local volunteers supported by the by the International Rescue Committee and interviewed a local government official. In the end, I decided not to includee this case study as most of the aspects of the community mobilization strategy are visible from the other examples (CZMOS in particular), IRC is an international NGO (while this research mostly focuses on locally driven initiatives) and establishing a trusting relationship without having a role in the process would be too time consuming. Nevertheless, as I have continued being informed about the initiatives in the municipality of Biskupija, there is opportunity to develop a case study on the local government’s peacebuilding agency in the future in collaboration with other action researchers from the Center for Peace studies and wider (for my research project aims to serve as a basis for multi-year public presentation of the community peacebuilding initiatives in the post-Yugoslav region).
In late August, I started negotiating a partnership with the Center for Education and Counseling of Women (CESI) to assist them in the evaluation process of their support to women’s initiatives in three post-war communities in the region of Banija (Gvozd, Dvor, Vojnic). The interim external evaluation was conducted in February 2003, providing rich material for my case study and opportunity to revisit CESI’s challenging role of external support provider and clarify the indicator framework with its donor partner Mercy Corps.
In the period May-June 2002, with assistance of two action researchers from the Center for Peace Studies (Jasmina Papa Stubbs and Andrijana Paric) I have conducted an evaluation of the community development project “Prijatelj”, located in a poor neighborhood of Zagreb, which aims to enhance social cohesion and quality of life of youth from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds (Roma, Bosnian Croat settlers, former Muslim refugees, impoverished domicile working class children, Albanian settlers). This case study has served as a control case of a project that does not make its peacebuilding mission explicit. While it has not been included in the final research paper due to lack of space, it will be put up on the web as the first of the case studies in the cluster of community development initiatives in multiethnic environments, which I will be working on over the upcoming year 2003-04 in collaboration with the Center for Peace Studies and MAP Consulting (a social development policy research and consulting firm that I have in the meantime created together with Aida Bagic and Paul Stubbs).
In collaboration with my Peace Studies Student Emina Bužikinic, in January 2003 I established contacts with the Youth Peace Group Danube from Vukovar as well as Marija Molnar, a renowned journalist and peace activist living in Vukovar), which have, in addition to earlier contact with Kruno Kudrov, sociologist field researcher in Vukovar, helped me prepare a case study included in the final research paper.
In February 2003, I created a collaborative relationship with the Sustainable Return of Refugees and Displaced Persons-Civil Society Project, the first such project funded under EC CARDS program as part of its assistance to four post-war municipalities in Croatia (Glina, Dvor, Knin and Gracac), implemented in partnership of Care International, ZaMirNET and GONG. The recommendations stemming from the mid-term evaluation which I coordinated in May 2003 (for which the framework and data collection system I helped elaborate in February 2003) are currently being used by EC Delegation in Croatia for the design of the next 18 months program.
Over period October 2002- February 2003, I have interviewed a number of government officials, international agency representatives relevant for providing support to the community peacebuilding process, including Deputy Prime Minister Goran Granic, Head of Government NGO Office, Cvjetana Plavša Matic, Deputy Minister for Public Works, Reconstruction and Construction Venko Curlin, Head of Civil Society Department of EC Delegation to Croatia Enrique Agudo Asenjo, representatives of OSCE Democratization and Civil Society Program , Head of UNDP Mission to Croatia Cornelis Klein, Mercy Corps Director Michael Bowers, AED Small Grants program Coordinator Andrea Tonc etc.

Activities in Serbia
In April and May 2002, I established contacts with Gradjanske inicijative (various projects in Southern Serbia), MOST (peace education projects), Center for Nonviolent Action (a project entailing a series of round tables presenting multiple experiences of war from the perspective of war veterans of Yugoslav Army, Croatian Army and B-H Army) and B92 Documentation Center (focused on collecting documents and opening dialogue on truth and reconciliation). As my research focus was narrowed to Croatia and Kosovo after consultations with IPF Cooridnator in October 2002, I did not pursue these contacts for the purpose of the immediate needs of this year’s research but as research will continue in the future, these contacts will help add Serbian case studies to the current collection. I made an additional trip to Belgrade in November 2002, in relation to two regional peace research initiatives, the Quaker Peace and Social Witness oral history research on the prerequisites of long-term reconciliation and consultations in respect to the planning of the Virtual Museum of Positive History, an ambitious web-based advocacy oriented cultural history project in the making, undertaken by dr. Marina Blagojevic, to which Center for Peace studies and me personally are partners. These contacts are relevant to the application of IPF research results as regional synergies are identified.

Activities in B-H
I have made arrangements with long-term partners of the Center for Peace Studies - Human Rights Office Tuzla, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Banja Luka and Youth Center Gornji Vakuf/Uskoplje to have access to their project documentation and opportunity to conduct follow-up research to my previous evaluation activities with these organizations. Follow-up research will take place in the period November 1 – January 31, 2002. As the research focus was narrowed in October 2002, I did not pursue these arrangements further for the duration of the IPF project but I am hopeful that in the future, pieces of analysis of policy issues related to community peacebuilding in B-H, as well as case studies, will be added to my website through collaboration with my Bosnian colleagues.
I made a trip to Sarajevo in December 2002, for the three days of intense planning of the Virtual Museum of Positive History, in cooperation with Dr. Marina Blagojevic and Nataša Milenkovic (a regional coordinator of the Quaker Peace and Social Witness, responsible for Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo), Vesna Teršelic, Center for Peace Studies and Samra Hadžiabdic Filipovic, coordinator of the Gender Center in federation of B-H. Virtual Museum is envisioned as an interactive space for presentation of diverse research and cultural projects that subvert the dominant interpretations of recent post-Yugoslav histories and provide space for an alternative multifaceted truth about inter-ethnic relations in he post-Yugoslav socio-cultural space. At the meeting the conceptual basis of this long-term research and advocacy endeavor was created, followed up by fundraising and establishment of partnerships. It is expected that the project will be launched in fall 2003.

Activities in Kosovo
Thanks to previously arranged cooperation with STAR Network of World Learning Program in Kosovo and Community Building Mitrovica (sponsored by IKV Holland), I had opportunity to spend a total of five weeks in Kosovo (January, April and September) and establish a broad range of contacts both at the policy and community levels. Thus, I have managed to identify and collect data on several case studies for my research (Community Building Mitrovica – a support program for a range of local initiatives with a peacebuilding potential; NORMA (women’s legal center)’s multiethnic project with informal and formal women’s groups; Kosovo Women’s Network Rjette and their process of opening to minority women’s groups paralleled by the self-organization and cross-ethnic cooperation activities of Serbian women’s organizations; URBAN FM’s Peace Train Project and media networking with B92; Mobile Containers’ project in Mitrovica). I have also conducted a dozen interviews with key Provisional Government and UNMIK officials engaged in return and minority integration processes, as well as a broad range of other stakeholders (OSCE, Council of Europe, local and Kosovo-wide media representatives etc.)
During my second week-long visit in December (shortened on the spot due to acute power cuts and cold that disabled me from more extensive field visits), together with Vesna Teršelic, I conducted a training on nonviolent communication, as part of the Mediation Course for the Ombudsman’s Institution in Kosovo, interviewed representatives of the Ombudsman’s Institution and spent five intense days with Drita Rexhepi, a minority program coordinator of the women’s law center NORMA, including field visits to different enclaves (Ashkali, Serbian) and the local legal aid clinic in Kacanik. The visit provided complementary information to my September visit to Kosovo. In addition to the relevance to my research paper, I have successfully I made with Kosovo activists with several regional peacebuilding programs and policy-making initiatives (MIRamiDA Plus Regional Peacebuilding Training Program, Center for the Study of Forgiveness and Reconciliation at the University of Coventry preparing an exchange program between Kosovo and Croatian peacebuilding activists, Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs assessment mission to Kosovo, a community arts project in the Balkans post-war areas Traveling Painters Project www.painter.nl).

Challenges
Due to the partnership approach, which is a basis for my “entry” into different organizations, I have committed to meeting specific needs for technical assistance requested by different organizations (facilitation of planning and evaluation processes; document reviews, training in monitoring and evaluation, preparation of detailed evaluation reports), which has been extremely time-consuming. Nevertheless, such two-way collaboration has enabled me to create highly trusting relationships and access otherwise unavailable information about internal processes and personal perceptions of local peacebuilding actors. It also provides a sound basis for partnerships in the upcoming application of research results.
The main challenge of identifying authentic peacebuilding initiatives carried out by local actors - the impact of which can be outlined – was acute in Kosovo, the social and political space of which is saturated by international actors and commodification of multiethnicity, which makes it hard to distinguish between projects that exist due to donor and those that are actually driven and meaningful to the Kosovar activists. Due to lack of my permanent presence in Kosovo, it was impossible to conduct in depth research of specific practices and to encourage policy initiatives. Nevertheless, the established contacts, which I feed into upcoming regional exchange activities, such as the planned study visit to Croatia of Kosovo local officials and NGO activists involved in the return process as well as possibility of encouraging Kosovo peacebuilding advocates to build upon my preliminary research, will ensure application and elaboration of the research findings.
Most importantly, during the writing phase, which was interrupted by my obligations to different projects with which I established contacts, I ended up immersed in too detailed an analysis of the Croatian institutional framework relevant for peacebuilding, which needed to be thoroughly cut and restructured for the final research paper. The guidance provided by my mentor Dr. Paul Stubbs was invaluable in this gruesome process. I have learned the hard way the importance of determining in advance the degree of specificity necessary for drawing key policy recommendations.
Each case study has proved to be specific, so it was impossible to write them in a uniform manner, even though the established evaluation criteria guided each analysis.
If I were to conduct this research project again I would seriously reconsider the time frame needed for efficient collection of information, which I would entrust to a fully developed research team (two half-time assistants involved in all project phases, one in Croatia and one in Kosovo). The workload related to field research, considering my deep involvement with each partner proved to be overwhelming. The major lesson that I have learned from this experience has been that I need to work in a team setting if I were to be effective. For that reason, all activities related to the application of results will be carried out through the two interconnected teams of the Center for Peace studies and MAP Consulting.

Application of Results
While the completion of this research project has taken considerably longer than expected, due to my intense engagements and obligations to several partner organizations, I am positive about its success, as it has provided a basis for the creation of peacebuilding policy advocacy cluster within the Center for Peace Studies and my own enhanced ability to approach peacebuilding issues from the perspective of their policy relevance. I am also encouraged by the sustainability of the follow-up activities, as they will be implemented in collaboration with diverse organizations and programs. As the outcomes of my research become visible, they will be communicated to IPF program.

1) I have agreed with the Head of Government Office of NGOs to assist in the development to the monitoring and evaluation framework that will pay special attention to social integration in the post-war communities, of the national Foundation for Civil Society Development, which will be established in October 2003, immediately upon the parliamentary adoption of the respective law. I will start this work in mid October 2003.

2) I have integrated all policy recommendations related to Croatia in the EC CARDS Project Proposal of the Center for Peace Studies the approval of which is pending (September 2003) and the implementation of which will start in fall 2003, with or without funding available (most activities are primarily dependent on readiness to engage in advocacy efforts on part of me and my colleagues at the Center for Peace Studies). The activities will combine policy briefings with the Ministry of Public Works, Reconstruction and Construction, Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Local and self Government, development of a policy proposal for the transformation of existent Civil Service into National Volunteer Service to parallel the process of professionalization of the Croatian military, monitoring of the return process, continued action research and public presentations of community peacebuilding practices (a series of round tables, preparation of additional case studies to be put on the resource website and fed to the media). The remaining funds of IPF program would be most helpful for the organization of public events related to these advocacy efforts.

3) In the context of MAP consulting, a recently founded special development policy research consulting company, I have co-authored a year long proposal to Charles Stewart Mott Foundation on community development issues in Croatia, entailing a series of colloquia and policy papers and two conferences, among which several themes are directly related to community peacebuilding (economic aspects of community development, community development as a peacebuilding too, effectiveness of external interventions) . I plan to use the framework of this project for the organization of a peacebuilding colloquium and a policy briefing on community peacebuilding in Croatia. In addition to triggering dynamic debates among various actors, this research will result in a book, published by MAP Consulting in the paperback and web form.
The research website will be integrate with the Center for Peace studies website and upgraded to serve as a resource and advocacy tool for promotion of community based peacebuilding and sustainable return, in collaboration with the Peace Studies program of CMS and identified country wide and regional partners.

4) I am involved in the preparations of a study visit of the group of select Kosovar local officials and NGO activists of different nationalities who will spend ten days in Croatia and explore effective community based approaches to facilitation of sustainable return, especially the aspect of majority-minority partnerships. Center for Peace are local partners of the Centre for the Study of Forgiveness and Reconciliation at the University of Coventry, the main organizer of the project.

5) Application of knowledge gained through IPF on other policy research projects:
Finally, IPF has been a unique learning experience to me as an action researcher and policy analyst. I have in the meantime undertaken two policy research projects for which the new perspective, and contacts I have gained through IPF seminars have been invaluable (Center for Peace Studies, Helsinki Citizens Assembly and EBCO Balkan, Serbia action research on prerequisites of informed policy debates on NATO enlargement in Croatia, Serbia and, B-H, funded by Freedom House, Regional program and MAP Consulting research on Corporate Social Responsibility in Croatia, commissioned by Academy of Educational Development, Croatia in partnership with International Business Leaders Forum).