Return of a history professor

Recently, my Bosnian colleague forwarded me a copy of an article from the national newspaper “Oslobodenje”. It was not about the Open Fun Football Schools or about football at all, but about a history professor who returned to Bosnia Herzegovina after living ten years in Aachen, Germany. In the article the professor describes his current life in the borderland, where two different administrative systems are being administered side-by-side while cutting through local communities and municipalities. He mentions the different education systems and how Serb children from Ustikolina are driving 30 km to join a Serb school rather than going to the local school; how the IPTF-line is cutting through building complexes and grave yards; how the stripes on the road have different colours in the Croatian Muslim Federation area and in the Serbian part of Bosnia Herzegovina, Republica Srpska. Today, the only place the children are together, the professor claims, is in the local football club of Kolina! – one of the hundreds of clubs that has been formed in the wake of our Open Fun Football School programme. Having battled for ten football seasons in order to use the children’s grassroots football as instrument to create a multiethnic and integrated platform to link together divided communities, we now start to see the impact!

 

Anders Levinsen
Director, Cross Cultures