General

On Thursday, May 11, 2023, the long-awaited event “Building Trust: Strengthening Unity in Kosovo” took place at the Klan Arena in Pristina, marking the 5th anniversary of the UN Mission in Kosovo’s initiative to enhance interethnic trust and cooperation. The event brought together numerous representatives from local and international organizations dedicated to trust-building and interethnic initiatives across Kosovo, as well as a large number of diplomatic representatives from Kosovo.

At the heart of the ceremony NGO CASA, together with its partner Integra from Pristina, had the opportunity to present a new initiative that captured public attention: the Barabar Center, a multiethnic center in Pristina. The center aims to promote interethnic dialogue, tolerance, equality, cultural collaboration, and serve as a hub for numerous initiatives that share these values.

Announcing the launch of the Barabar Center, the Executive Directors of NGO CASA, Miodrag Miki Marinković, and Integra’s Kushtrim Kolići, introduced the principles of the initiative, as outlined in the Barabar Principles publication (link provided here). This set of 10 operational and core principles establishes the framework for the Barabar Center’s activities and the values it will promote within the initiative.

Project partners, NGO CASA and Integra, are working diligently to establish communication channels for the Barabar Center, including the center’s main website and profiles on popular social media platforms. Until then, you can stay informed about the progress of the initiative and upcoming events taking place within the Barabar Center through https://ngo-integra.org and https://ngocasa.org/.

Barabar Centre invites all young visual artists to be part of the ‘ArtSphere’ project. The objective of the project is to create an environment that promotes the growth and recognition of young artists in Kosovo.

This project envisages the organization of a sales exhibition which will be curated and placed in the spaces of the Barabar Centre in the Grand Hotel, and the development of an online sales exhibition.

In collaboration with the professionals in the field, the Barabar Centre will undertake:

– The selection of artistic works

– Curation, organization, promotion, and maintenance of the physical and online exhibition,

– Facilitating the sale of artistic works

On the other hand, all the means will be received by the artists from the sales of their works.

All those interested should send to office@ngocasa.org:

– Photographs of up to three works (paintings, sculptures, artistic photographs)

– The specifications of the works sent

– CV

This call is open from 10 to 25 May 2023.

The project is implemented by Barabar Centre, Integra and Casa and is supported by the Swiss Cooperation Office in Kosovo.

Center for Affirmative Social Actions CASA proudly presents a first edition of The *Dictionary of the words that need no translation.* The
publication sorts more than 450 words shared between Serbian and Albanian languages and used in everyday communication. The selected words are accompanied by 50 short stories that illuminate their cultural, social, and historical contexts shaped by all the communities living in Kosovo. The Dictionary is leisure reading, a learning tool but also a testimony of cultural interactions and
cohabitation between different ethnic groups living in Kosovo, sculpted over the tempestuous centuries into shared linguistic and cultural heritage.
The identification of words was performed in a joint trust-building exercise by young students from various Kosovo communities, gathered by project partner Mlada Aktivna Gračanica. The classification and annotation of the selected words were performed by a group of authors including linguist Nora Bezera, copywriter Ines Aljović and Miodrag Marinković a director of NGO CASA who contributed with dozens of affiliated stories. The authors encourage the use of the Dictionary both as a learning tool for individuals learning Serbian or Albanian language or/and by civic initiatives developing and facilitating trust-building initiatives in Kosovo.

The Dictionary is a result of prolific cooperation between CASA and Mlada Aktivna Gračanica under the *Project that needs no translation*, supported by the UNDP program *Cultural Heritage as a Driver for Intercommunity Dialogue and Social Cohesion *funded by the European Union. The Dictionary can be downloaded at The Dictionary of the words that need no translation.