Few earn the opportunity to travel across the world to foreign lands. Even fewer have the chance to make the lasting impact that East Millsboro Elementary school teacher Kathy DiSabatino did in Bosnia and Herzegovina just last month.
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Members of the Delaware 4H delegation visit a castle in Srebrnik, Bosnia.
With her involvement in 4-H, a youth organization administered by both the Cooperative Extension System and the United States Department of Agriculture, DiSabatino had housed teachers from Bosnia and Herzegovina as they would travel to the United States. During their stays, Bosnian teachers and students would be educated and trained through experiential programs on the topics of leadership and life skills.
“Once they got the training, they would return to their home towns to share a project,” said DiSabatino.
This year, teachers and students from the United States would have the chance to switch positions and visit the other land to learn what changes have been made concerning leadership in youth.
“I had been asking for two years, ‘If you ever need to bring someone over to Bosnia, I would love to go,’” DiSabatino said. That opportunity came Sept. 23 through Oct. 7, though the experience, she said, will stay with her for life.
In 14 days, the group traveled to 10 cities in three different countries, in an effort to educate youth about developing leadership skills, conveying concepts of civil participation and their responsibility in a democracy, and to establish ties between the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the United States.
The group visited the larger Bosnian cities of Sarajevo and Mostar, as well as the neighboring countries of Croatia and Serbia. They saw towns and cities that had sent teachers to the U.S., in attempt to understand how they had been influenced and what they had taken back with them to tell others.
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American Ambassador to Bosnia and Hercegovina Charles English, center, poses on the steps of the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and Hercegovina with the Delaware 4H delegation, which included Katy Daly, Mark Manno (state 4H staff), East Millsboro Elementary teach
“We can see what they took from us and see how it’s being applied there,” said DiSabatino.
Under DiSabatino’s supervision were three high school juniors and a senior from schools in New Castle and Kent counties. No applications from Sussex County schools were submitted for this trip, though DiSabatino hopes that awareness will spread interest.
Before the trip, background research was required to familiarize the participants with the foreign country.
“I knew very little about Bosnia prior to this,” said DiSabatino, “other than the fact that there had been a war. The truth is that they had tribes that lived in that area since 60 B.C. When you know that a civilization that has been there for that long, you know that there’s quite a history.”
Bosnia and Herzegovina, referred to primarily in English as simply “Bosnia,” is part of the former country of Yugoslavia in Eastern Europe, just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. A mountainous country, roughly the size of West Virginia, it is situated along the central Dinaric Alps.
“The country is having a hard time letting go of the past and moving on to the future,” said DiSabatino. “That is perhaps their biggest stumbling block in Bosnia right now.”
A three-year war, ended in 1995, has troubled the country, dividing it three ways, between different ethnic/religious, constituent groups: the Bosniaks, which are typically of Muslim faith, the Serbs, who are Eastern Orthodox, and Croats, who are primarily Catholic.
The signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995 helped alleviate tension between these groups throughout the country, though U.S. and United Nations peacekeeping forces still help to maintain order there.
“Their religion and ethnic group is who they connect with,” DiSabatino said, “rather than saying they are Bosnian. They have a difficult time identifying as ‘Bosnians.’ We look at ourselves as Americans. One doesn’t really identify themselves first as being a resident of Dagsboro, then Sussex County and a Delawarean. They focus on the smaller part of where they come from.”
Recognizing this separation and eliminating the tension between them is one of the main goals of the 4-H program.
“What we were trying to do is bring kids from towns that were very ethnically drawn,” she said. “If you have a town the size of Millsboro, it was basically run by one ethnic group, so everything kind of goes one way. We wanted to show them that you have an ethnicity and not lose site of what your country should be about.”
Their governmental system is classified as a parliamentary democracy, operated by a rotation of three presidents at a time, representing each ethnic group.
“Not a whole lot gets done that way,” DiSabatino continued. “If the president in power at the time votes on something one way, the other two can veto.”
The education system and schools vary greatly from what Americans are accustomed to.
“[In the United States] we have a federal government that runs our education system and it trickles down,” DiSabatino said. “[Bosnians] don’t, but what they have somewhat works for them.”
Collegiate-level studying and responsibility are common in Bosnian secondary school. While in the U.S. students will spend most of their time concentrating on a handful of subjects through a semester, Bosnian students will be taught a vast multitude of subjects, though spend less time on each.
“School is mandatory from first to ninth grade,” DiSabatino explained. “High school is optional, and you’d have to pay a nominal fee. Only those kids who really want to go on to college go to high school.”
Classrooms and libraries are considerably limited in space and numbers. Very few computers are available to students, and features like chalkboards and overhead projectors are scarce, if present at all.
“The leadership program was to inform these kids that they could be leaders to their own town,” she said. “They could make a change. We taught leadership and problem-solving.”
Other programs, such as the Boys and Girls Club and Bridges, which teaches about tolerance, were brought in, as well. Though the group is international, the 4-H program itself is not yet implemented in Bosnia.
The program centralized on giving youth in Bosnia a purpose and a responsibility.
“Many kids in Bosnia walk around aimlessly,” said DiSabatino, “and we wanted to provide them with something that would allow them to be a better part of society, and we wanted to have an impact on one specific area at a time. We would teach one group first aid education, and they’ve gone out and taught others.”
Unlike in the United States, where the “next generation” mentality supports participation from the youth, such is not the case across the way.
“The adults of the country are not used to children standing up and being leaders,” she explained. “Some communities have been very receptive to children in the program, but others have not. Since signing the Dayton Peace Accord, they have started their own government, and they’re just not used to entrusting youth in a leadership role.”
DiSabatino had the chance to meet the U.S. ambassador to Bosnia, who explained that they “were at a ‘grass-roots’ level that he would never be able to achieve.”
“He told us that he would meet mayors of the different cantons and governmental officials throughout the country,” said DiSabatino, “but he could never meet the down-to-earth people that we could during our time there. That sort of served as my epiphany, where I realized that we were helping others in a way that no one had ever touched them before.”
Breathtaking scenes of the Alps and ruins of past warfare offered an awe-inspiring contrast of exactly what the country has seen over its years.
“As we traveled along,” she said, “you’d see these beautiful, little towns, just like you see in a painting, then all of a sudden, there’d be a bombed-out shell of a home. Sometimes there’d even be a cluster of them amidst these beautiful houses. That was one of the more powerful things that our kids experienced over there.”
“I think the children enjoyed living as a Bosnian youth,” she said. “It was a very moving experience. They were able to see a very simplistic lifestyle. They saw that they were OK with what they do have, and they’re satisfied.”
As part of the program, DiSabatino and the other participants will meet to assemble a 4-H presentation at the State Department of Agriculture. DiSabatino has even considered adding a selection to the educational councilor’s telecast, hoping to share her knowledge with even more people.
“It was really the experience of a lifetime,” she said.
Despite the hardships the country has faced in recent years, DiSabatino was able to recognize the parallel with their everyday life.
“They seem so different, but they’re experiencing a lot of the same problems we face; unemployment, poverty. It’s just on a different level. We’re a large world, but we’re still all the same.”