NGO Youth Power/Snaga Mladih reacted on the occasion of the incident which took place on Monday, 08 December 2014, in the schoolyard of Engineering and Traffic Secondary School in Mostar, when a dozen of masked persons attacked with stones and injured five students during the break!
NGO Youth Power/Snaga Mladih from Mostar, which deals with informal education of young people and the prevention of violence throughout its entire work, condemns all acts of violence including the unfortunate incident that happened on Monday, 08 December 2014 in front of the Engineering and Traffic Secondary School in Mostar. Although scenes of peer violence are not uncommon in BiH, we would like to take this opportunity to point out that the young people in BiH also have positive stories about the fight against violence, and that larger number of young will be the first to condemn all types of violence. We believe that violence as such does not lead to anything positive. We urge that the perpetrators of this incident be sanctioned, not in the sense of punishment as such, but in the sense of education so that they would understand how bad their act was and that similar incidents would not be repeated.
Our message is that the response to violence cannot be only punitive measures, but also longtime process of education starting from a family through the school to the entire society. The organization Youth Power/Snaga Mladih hereby makes itself publicly available to work, in cooperation with relevant institutions, on education of young men who were perpetrators of this incident.
Through our work, we as an organization but also as individuals who make this organization, have gained enough knowledge and skills to systematically work on the education of young people who have chosen violence in one period of their lives as a response to the situation in which they found themselves. Our team is comprised of young people who, because of their expertise and age, are able to work on changing the attitudes of the abusers. Changing the attitudes of young people and promoting healthy lifestyles is the only way to make cases like this become just an ugly stain in the memory of our fellow citizens.
In this way we would also like to draw public attention to the problem of violence which is very present in our society, and especially in our local environment. Headlines in newspapers alluding to violent behavior of young men are more and more common. In addition to the stories that can be read in the newspapers there are also thousands and thousands of unreported cases of violence that never reach the front page of the print media or online portals. Once again, we appeal to every individual to report a case of violence and thus contribute to reducing the rates of violence.
NGO “Youth Power/Snaga Mladih” has recently started with the implementation of the project which directly works on preventing and combating violence among young people. The name of the project is “Promoting Healthier Lifestyles among Youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina by Challenging Gender Stereotypes”. The project is implemented in cooperation with Care International Balkans with the support of Swiss Government, Austrian Development Cooperation, OAK Foundation and CARE Deutschland-Luxemburg.
Local Be a man club also operates within the project, about whose work you can get information through the Facebook page BudiMuskoKlubMostar
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