Belgrade, Serbia
Hello all,
After a while, I have many stories to share. I just came back from Belgrade, Iugoslavia, where I participated in the EuroLDS, an AIESEC conference with 240 delegates from 45 different countries around the world.
AIESEC is the largest NGO in Iugoslavia and the only one who didn't close during the war 2 years ago, the fact of being the most important international conference for the last 2 years had some implications: we were on national tv and newspapers everyday, everybody knew about AIESEC, the president gave personal support for the organization (garanteed free visas for all delegates), the minister of external affairs spoke in the opening cerimony, and other cool things...
Iugoslavia is much more developed then we can imagined. Much of what happened was already rebuilt and the serbians have a very strong feeling of developing their own country, incredible. The exceptions are the buildings in Belgrade bombed by NATO forces in 1999. They stayed there as a symbol of what happened, so people won't forget it anymore... really impressive... nowadays there are still conflicts in Kosovo.
The conference was about Leadership Development and other AIESEC issues, but not only. The best conversations I had were about different visions about sustenability and values. But of course we talked about the war, and it couldn't be better, in the same group of people, having an Croatian, Serbian, Kosovar, Macedonian and Slovenian sharing the facts and consequences in the most peaceful way, about how people were used to live their lives while bombs were falling 100m from their homes...
Having such discussions was an example that should happen more often. I'm glad I was there... but the funny part was at the border, because of my visa... I'll write later exclusivately about it...
Anyways, now I'm back again in Romania, waiting for the next adventure
Henrique Vedana, Romania
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