ABC PROJECT (American Bosnian Collaboration)

American Bosnian Collaboration Project (ABC) brings together American students from William and Mary College (Williamsburg, Virginia, USA) and Bosnian students from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University in Sarajevo (Teacher Education Program, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) to foster intercultural understanding and to work for social change for the youth of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bosnian peace education.

The ABC project has been active since 1999 when the first group of William and Mary students traveled to Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to collaboratively work with the Bosnian student, Larisa Kasumagić, who was a co-founder of the project and who facilitated this collaboration in local communities and schools together with a local NGO Sezam.

Since 2010 the Project has been shifted to Sarajevo, where the students from the Teacher Education Program of the English Department have worked closely with the students from William and Mary and the local NGO Creativus on designing and developing educational approaches that are based on intercultural and peace pedagogies and which enable students to work collaboratively in international and intercultural environment.

In February 2018 the ABC Project alumni and participating members gathered in Williamsburg to celebrate the project’s 20th anniversary. The celebration was held in conjunction with the W&M Global Film Festival and it featured many workshops as well as screening of Children of Peace, a film featuring the experiences of the post-war generation in BiH.

https://www.wm.edu/offices/revescenter/publications/worldminded/2018-spring/2018-sp-bosnia.php

The William & Mary „American Bosnian Collaboration“ project is based at W&M’s Global Research Institute

https://www.wm.edu/offices/global-research/research-labs/abc/index.php

The Sarajevo University „American and Bosnian Collaboration“ project is based at Peace Education Hub of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo (since 2022) and it works closely with a local NGO Creativus (Youth Center for Communication and Creative Learning) and local primary and secondary schools in Sarajevo Canton.