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A four-day workshop entitled Gender Approach in Community Organizing was held in Zugdidi, Georgia from 9thto 12thof May, 2018. The event was initiated by Tsitsino Shengelia from the Centre for Civic Activism from Zugdidi in the framework of the project “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art”.

The group of participants of the four-day school of using video for advocacy consisted mainly of people from Novocherkassk. However, the project team involved several members of the ARENA network from other countries or people who were delegated by the network members.

Noteworthy, that two of the ARENA project participants, Lyubov Martinets from Ukraine and Zulfiya Safkhanova from Azerbaijan, were involved as co-facilitators of the training. The purpose was to further strengthen the regional network and to involve new actors from the mentioned regions. In total 23 participants of different age-groups and professions attended the school. With the support and mentorship of the facilitators and co-facilitators they learned the basic skills of video-making, script writing, video editing, etc.

On March 25 screening of the films, produced under the umbrella of the regional program “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art” launched and supported by the “Peace Dialogue” NGO, and a follow up discussion took place in the coffee shop “12 Chairs”. Documentary and animated movies “The Corridor” (director Igrar Gurban, Azerbaijan), “Mark Lvovich Tyulpanov and Others” (director Daria Kavelina, Ukraine), and “Hostility” (director Norayr Hambaryan, Armenia) were shown.

The project “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art” was launched in 2015. The project is aimed at improving the impact of peacebuilding efforts by the civil society actors in the conflict affected post-Soviet area. For the last three years, the project initiators, Armenian NGO Peace Dialogue and OWEN e.V. in Germany, support peacebuilding and human rights activists as well as independent artists from the South Caucasus Region, Russian Federation and Ukraine in developing pro-active, art-based strategies and hands-on methodologies for the community-based peacebuilding.

In 2018 the teams in PD and OWEN will strive to support the local groups in implementing activities derived from their strategies, further strengthen the regional network and to involve new actors from the mentioned regions.

December 22, 2017 at the Kyiv office of the Rosa Luxemburg foundation, was the first public screening of an animated film by Dana Kavelina “The Story of Mark Tulip Who Talked to Flowers”.

This guide is based on the systematization and analysis of experiences of the ARENA network members through the use of different artistic means in their community-based, peace-building work within their respective conflict-affected societies. The publication was compiled primarily to assist the staff in the organisations that work with peace-building efforts. It is also envisioned as a resource for anyone interested in community-based, peace activism. The methodological guide intends to encourage the reader to apply some of their own initiative and adapt the examples to the needs of their own communities and within their local context.

Nevertheless, putting aside the occurrences when the deaths of the killed soldiers were presented as results of the ceasefire violation, 70% of the 1020 cases collected on the website are not connected with the violation of the ceasefire, instead they are the result of unresolved issues, unhealthy atmosphere in the army, and the non-statutory relationships.