Emma Griffiths - ICONS
Some members of the Community of the Cross of Nails are schools which come together to form the International Cross of Nails Schools network (ICONS).
Emma Griffiths, Associate Director of Reconciliation, shares her story of working in Bosnia Hercegovina and linking schools there with schools here in the UK.
“Last year I visited Tuzla in north-east Bosnia Hercegovina to officially launch the ‘Schools for Peace – Skola za Mir’ project, linking schools in Serbia, Bosnia Hercegovina and the UK.
“We were very generously hosted by the school and were the guests of honour at the school celebration event, attended by the Minister for Education, in the Cultural Centre. The objective of this project is to encourage the schools to work on shared projects which look at identity and peace building.
“As part of our ICONS network we will help promote and support each of the partner schools in all three countries with educational activities which enable young people to remember past events in ways which encourage understanding of and co-operation in the present. This means demonstrating that our similarities and our differences are both pathways to partnership.
“The final few days were spent in Sarajevo at the Peace Conference, where we attended a seminar run by one our CCN Partners – Community for Reconciliation: Footprints - who work in Vukovar and Osijek, Croatia.
“On Monday Lisa, Anne (a colleague from Clinton Primary School, Kenilworth) and I stood on the corner where Gavrilo Princip shot Franz Ferdinand on 28th June 1914, which is said to have sparked World War I.
“We sat together and said the Litany of Reconciliation:
The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
“These phrases took on a new perspective and resonance.”
Emma Griffiths, Associate Director of Reconciliation