“This splendid country has always been a crossroads of many cultures.” Thus began the historical overview that Project Manager Christian Valerio presented to us, to bring us closer to the reality of the Balkan country he manages. “Until about thirty years ago, Orthodox Serbs, Croat-Catholics, Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), and Jewish people coexisted peacefully. In common among them, besides the Serbo-Croatian language and the territory, they always had much: the love that often arose between members of different ethnic groups was proof of this peaceful coexistence; mixed marriages were very frequent.

In the first decade of the new millennium, the bad memories were still vivid in the people who had lived through the terrible preceding decade. Inter Campus in Bosnia and Herzegovina works with the new generations. The future of the country, pure children, now hear about these stories only at school or within their homes, from relatives who escaped the carnage, but who would evidently prefer to turn the page and forget those sad memories and the smell of fear.

It was the year 2011 when we began our Inter Campus mission with the new local partner, the Sprofondo-Thalia association. Work continues to this day on the outskirts of the capital with two coaches, Ahmed of Muslim faith and Radoš of Orthodox faith. Together they manage two groups of 40 children of different religious faiths, all united by the Nerazzurri colors.

The same year, a few months earlier, heading to Sarajevo to activate the new project, while passing through Herzegovina by car, many Croatian flags were waving along the roads of the country’s coastal region. It was here that we encountered a reality previously unknown to us; in the beautiful medieval city founded by the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century, separated by the Neretva River, a theater of urban guerrilla warfare during the war, which still shows indelible scars on its buildings today. On November 9, 1993, the city made international headlines for the destruction of the city’s symbol, an architectural jewel, the Old Stone Bridge, the “Stari Most,” connecting the two sides of the city, east and west. On one side, to the west, Croatian checkerboard flags reigned; on the other eastern bank of the city, Bosnian ones.

A few kilometers away, in the small village of Domanovici, we visited the local school, and it was at that moment that, aware of the great challenge we would face, we felt the duty to do something. The school was, and still is today, part of a program conceived in the immediate post-war period as a temporary solution that was supposed to encourage the return of people displaced during the conflict, “Dvije škole pod jednim krovom” (“Two schools under one roof”), school buildings separated on an ethnic basis between Croats and Bosnians. In Domanovici, the two-story building is attended on the ground floor by Bosnian children and is managed by teachers and staff of Muslim faith; on the upper floor, the children and administrative management are entrusted to people of Croatian origin and Catholic faith. The start of lessons and breaks are planned following two different schedules to avoid contact between peers. A blatant discrimination where children are segregated and kept apart, fueling the sentiment of division and providing each with a biased view.

For ten years, Inter Campus has activated a project that sees a hundred children of any gender, ethnicity, and religious faith playing freely together. Since 2011, the flag with the colors of the sky and night, inspired by principles of brotherhood, has flown high at the entrance to the Domanovici football field. From that day on, many parents bring their children from all over the region to the field to play in the only mixed team where boys and girls of every ethnicity or religious faith are brothers and sisters united by the Nerazzurri jerseys.

Our work of “re-pacification” continues.”