The chosen journalists are:

• Aleksandra Stankovic from Serbia,
• Andrea Gheorghe from Romania,
• Dalibor Dobric from Croatia,
• Darko Duridanski from Macedonia,
• Gjergj Erebara from Albania,
• Lavdim Hamidi from Kosovo,
• Magda Munteanu from Romania,
• Mirsad Bajtarevic from Bosnia,
• Stanimir Ivanov Kumurdijev from Bulgaria and
• Zvezdana Crnogorac from Serbia .

They will participate until the end of the year in an intensive programme of training, research and reporting, beginning with a week-long seminar in Berlin on April 18.

Information on their experiences will be regularly posted on the Fellowship website.

Following the close of the appeal for applications, the selection committee intends to choose up to ten journalists to participate in this year’s programme.

The selection committee consists of six permanent members from the media community in the Balkans, Austria and Germany, as well as one annual member, who is an expert on this year’s Fellowship theme - energy.

The results of the selection will be announced on March 20 on fellowship.birn.eu.com.

The occasion was to mark the completion of the Balkan fellowship for journalistic excellence for 2007, an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

Dragana Zarkovic Obradovic, manager of the Fellowship programme, presented the publication, and used this opportunity to announce the launch of the Fellowship for 2008. 

Last year’s fellow from Croatia, Davor Konjikusic, also took part in the launch, and shared with the guests his experiences about the programme. He encouraged journalists to apply and use this unique opportunity to realise their own investigative projects.

He talked about the topic of his own article, which highlighted the issue of inter-cultural cooperation in the Balkans. 

All journalists attending expressed a keen interest in the programme, while information about the book and the programme for next year was carried by HINA news agency and on web portal Javno.hr.  A number of media outlets said they would review the book and republish some of the fellows’ articles.

All articles in the book deal with the issue of mobility. They can be found in pdf form on the website http://fellowship.birn.eu.com in the local languages, as well as in English and German.

The articles are the product of investigative work by last year’s fellows, and can be republished free of charge.

As the Balkan news media increasingly need to cover complex reform issues with regional and Europe-wide dimensions, this programme aims to foster quality reporting, regional networking among journalists and balanced coverage of topics that are central to the region as well as to the European Union.

Journalists from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia, are encouraged to submit research proposals on this year’s theme – ENERGY.

It’s a topic that preoccupies officials, politicians and citizens across Europe - and arguably one of the biggest challenges facing this continent and the international community. In 2008, applicants for the Fellowship programme are invited to explore the subject of energy. But not only headline issues such as the supply of fuel, climate change and renewable resources. Entrants are also encouraged to look at human energy such as the energy of ideas, energy for change and energy for reconstruction as well as destruction.

Ten fellows will be chosen on the basis of research proposals, which should include plans for cross-border research within the Balkan region and European Union member states, drawing on examples of cooperation or the lack of such collaboration, making comparisons and highlighting know-how.

They will participate in the fellowship programme, which features an introductory seminar in Berlin, supervision and mentoring, individual research trips to another country of the region and the EU, and a concluding seminar and award ceremony in Vienna. Supporting seminars also feature meetings with Austrian and German political and economic actors as well as with the Fellowship’s media partners - Süddeutsche Zeitung and Der Standard.

Successful applicants will receive a fellowship of 2000 Euros and a travel allowance of up to 2000 Euros, while the programme’s selection committee, composed of local and European journalists and experts, will award one fellow an individually-tailored opportunity for further professional development, to the value of 8000 Euros.

Fellowship reports will be published at the end of the year, and disseminated widely in all local languages, English and German.

Participants are invited to tackle a broad range of themes within a Balkan or European context: from energy security, dependence on distant sources of fuel, health and pollution, the move to replace fossil fuels with green energy, and changes in lifestyle to reduce our carbon footprint, to the efforts of individuals or groups to confront political corruption, ethnic intolerance or prejudices in education and business.

Proposals should include plans for cross-border research, involving at least two countries in the Balkans and one EU member state. They can highlight examples of success as well as barriers to learning from others’ experiences. They should unearth fresh information or adopt original perspectives that will attract a wide readership in the Balkans and in the EU. The completed articles should be 2,000 words in length.

The fellowship programme features an introductory seminar in Berlin, providing professional guidance to fellows as they prepare their projects. Once underway, local editors from BIRN network are on hand to supervise and mentor each fellow’s research and reporting. The programme moreover includes individual research trips to another country of the region and the EU, as well as a concluding seminar and award ceremony in Vienna. Supporting programmes in Vienna and Berlin ensure that fellows learn about current political and economic issues of concern in the EU, and feature meetings with representatives of the Austrian and German media, as well as political and economic actors.

Journalists receive a fellowship of 2000 Euros and a travel allowance of up to 2000 Euros.

The selection committee judges the quality of reports and progress made, awarding one fellow with an individually-tailored opportunity for further professional development, to the value of 8000 Euros.

Fellowship reports are published in a special book and electronic format, and disseminated widely in all local languages, English and German.

Fellows are encouraged to maintain contact and support new intakes through an alumni network.

Requirements
- citizen of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania or Serbia,
- demonstrable experience in written journalism;
- agreement of employer to participate in the fellowship programme;
- ability to communicate fluently in English
(NB. reporting may be done in local language).

Representatives of local media, various NGOs, as well as friends of the organization attended the presentation.

BIRN Romania Director Marian Chiriac spoke about the Fellowship and announced next year’s programme, encouraging local young journalists to apply for it.

Romanian fellow, Bogdan Asaftei, gave an overview of his article and findings. In his investigation, Bogdan addressed the issue of social effects following relocation of some Western companies to Eastern Europe.

The event also provided an opportunity to announce BIRN’s commercialisation plans.

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and Erste Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, selects ten fellows annually to do research within a theme related to European integration. In 2007, this was ‘mobility’, and the fellows from throughout the region covered obstacles and opportunities to the movement of goods, people and ideas in a range of sectors, including labour markets, business, justice, transport, sport, education and culture. The results were published on November 16, online and in hard copy, in English, German and all main languages of the Balkans.

Journalists and editors from the country’s most influential media as well as friends of the organisation attended the reception, organised to promote the book containing ten reports written by journalists from all over the Balkans.
BIRN Macedonia`s country director Ana Petruseva presented the background to The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, which provided the framework for the book’s publication, and announced plans for next year`s programme, inviting journalists and editors to make use of the opportunities it offered. The 2007 Macedonian fellow, Eleonora Veninova, author of the article, “Visa regime fails to keep Balkan immigrants at bay”, spoke about her experiences with the programme, and recommended it to the journalists attending the meeting.

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and Erste Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, selects ten fellows annually to carry out research within a theme related to European integration. In 2007, this was ‘mobility’, and the fellows from throughout the region covered obstacles and opportunities to the movement of goods, people and ideas in a range of sectors, including labour markets, business, justice, transport, sport, education and culture. The results were published on November 16, online and in hard copy, in English, German and all main languages of the Balkans.

To find out more about the Fellowship programme, and to read Moving On online, go to fellowship.birn.eu.com or email fellowship@birn.eu.com

As I sift through numerous articles in the Internet, regarding Al Gore’s Peace Nobel, I find out more about issues from global warming itself, to global perceptions of the significance of a global award. One of those articles I read today and was written by a Scandinavian environmental expert. He is against Gore being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because his dedication for global warming has shifted the attention away from more urgent global concerns, such as poverty, which, he says, takes the lives of 4 million a year. He, then, goes on with classifying Gore’s claims as unfounded, such as the one that the sea level will rise for 7 meters in our lifetimes.

Despite respecting the variety of opinions, I can’t help but assert that those trying to interfere with Gore’s Nobel, are badly failing to understand one essential effect that Gore’s dedication has produced: the global social awareness he has raised for the issue of global warming, and more importantly, for the safety of the world we live in. And this, without going further into the contribution he has made in instilling a global dimension to the understanding of life throughout provincial societies.

Never before Gore’s haunting emergence, have I heard more taxi drivers and ordinary citizens discuss local weather from a global perspective. In doing so, Gore was never mentioned. I am sure that few of those ordinary people could exactly relate Gore with their sudden global take on the issues that affected their routines, such as freezing cold in August. But where else could the awareness come, when, after all, I also heard people saying that “this global warming thing concerns Western societies more, rather than us”.

Raising social awareness for issues of collective concern is the first great step towards making a tangible change. Though the concept of raising awareness has been stereotyped to great extents, it remains, in my opinion, a crucial undertaking before one can expect a decision for action.

My decision to apply for the Fellowship came after several refusals to do so. The reason is not complicated: I perceived the program to be too specific in its expectations and I perceived myself to stand in stark contrast with the nature of the program. And I think nothing can explain this latter perception more than the fact that I am a 20-year-old dropout.

When Ms. Anna McTaggart had made it into my inbox with her announcement for the selection decision, I could not help but go back to my application and reread my research proposal several times more.

In it I rediscovered something that would lead my work the following months: the zeal to raise awareness for problems which are wearing down the spirit of an aspiring society by mining the very driving force that has, or must have, the resources to keep this society moving forward. It is important to mention some reasons that led me to deciding for this topic, for they bear crucial significance to the overall quality of the article I have written, the weight of the research and the commitment attached, or, within a special context, lack thereof.

Having grown up in a liberal family, if nothing else, it has fostered in me the courage to question things and the inquisitiveness to always look for more into issues. Now that I look back, I can easily feel the consequences that this upbringing has brought.

Throughout school years, I have been critical of the established practices in my education system. In the 3rd grade, I came back home crying, having seen my teacher hitting fellow pupils. In the 8^th grade, I would make the school’s most vicious and authoritarian, 60-something teacher, apologize in front of his fearing colleagues for slapping me. Throughout high school years, I would constantly challenge unreasonable discriminations, arbitrary application of rules, and other low forms of favoritism or authoritarianism. By the time I enrolled in the University of Prishtina, I had two choices: continue with this education system, and put up with all kinds of problems of communist flavor, or drop out. I attended for a year, for the sake of parents, but dropped out, for the sake of my own.

I would be glad if my disappointment would end with the bad teachers in school, though.

What I produced with this Fellowship, is a general account of the overall reality Europe’s youngest population is living in, and which reality has clear reference points, which are both sad and grave to look back at. Communism left an enduring mark on the social discourse, the 90s scarred forever the childhood of today’s youth, and the post-war era is unfolding in a limbo full of tilting walls.

I initially wanted to look more into the state of mind, the psychosocial dimension of the problems of youth. I intended to see how a Kosovo young person fits in a European setting with what he has gone through, what he is acquiring now in Kosovo, and the potential he presents when bringing together the two in the face of a closed “free world”. But, that seemed too ambitious, or, perhaps, too soon to look into, with the consequences of this very education system looming large in almost 90 per cent of more than 30 interviews I had with professors, analysts, experts, officials, demographers, economists, politicians and NGO workers. In Prishtina, Mitrovica, Prizren, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels, Amsterdam, The Hague.

Young people would be around me at all times: talented, ambitious, malcontents, disaffected…unemployed slackers, self-complacent hard-workers, drug addicts with a vision for life, artists without any. Young, sitting cashiers who would rather be a practicing psychologists, isolated Albanians and Serbs with a desperate eye abroad. They are all my friends whom I have been sharing the uneventful everyday or the unforgettable escapades. I needed not interview them. Doing so would be unnatural, for I would step out of my self. I could just as well be a journalist with them, but that seemed unnecessary. Because I am one of them! I share with them the frustration with the education system, the understanding of the need for change, the lack of clear vision, the ambitious path to pursue, conformism, apathy and fearfulness to run counter to social, political or economical systems which run to the detriment of our own future. I share with them the idealism and constant apprehension.

What I have found out from my previous travels is that mobility of brain is a cure to almost all of these problems. I have no doubt that this year’s topic of the Fellowship has been chosen based on the conviction that mobility plays a key role in changing a reality thru providing mobility to individuals. Globetrotting young Germans and Dutch I met along the road seemed equally bored with their routines as their Kosovar counterparts. But I dare not discuss their common points in this regard, having in mind the lifestyle of the former and the scope of problems, as well as opportunities, that the latter face with, and have available, respectively. The Dutch and German are the world citizens Al Gore wants to reach out to, not only because predictions do include The Netherlands being flooded. But, rather, because the Dutch and the German have already established the sensitivity for important issues, and they do act, individually or collectively, democratically or radically, for anything surrounding their life space.

It was not my intention to “force” the reader to see himself as a global citizen, for my reader is a Dutch or a German, who already is a global citizen, and for my reader is a Kosovo inhabitant, who is not yet a citizen of his own country. Rather, what I deeply intended was to raise awareness among both the Dutch and the German about the fact that they have to emphasize in their societies the concept of mobility and sharing of opportunities, and in their governments, the need to open gates for the isolated.

Moreover, I wanted to make my Kosovar reader understand that sooner rather than later he has to, not only acknowledge the dire state of mind we are in and system we are led by, but act decisively and urgently in addressing issues such as quality of education, civil activism, and the overall deplorable conditions of the socioeconomic nature, such as unemployment, opportunities, etc.

Liberal democracy in Kosovo is a decree issued by UNMIK, one of my interviewees would say. And I couldn’t agree more with him, aware of the hypocrisy with which this fledgling wannabe-country is led with. When caught off guard, UNMIK officials do admit they do not perceive themselves to be serving to a democratic country. Therefore, calls for democratic maturity are just like asking the starving kids to be patient because food is on the way.

In June, right after the Vienna seminar, I came back to Kosovo with enough enthusiasm to start with the research. But a month went by with myself observing things with a different eye, that of a journalist. I looked for the human stories to be featured in my article, those who would embody the young Kosovar. Everyone would do so, in a way or another! I kept on with the coffee-migration routine and brought up urgent social problems more frequently in social hangouts. I also participated in a couple of debates and a couple of demonstrations by a political movement, whose leader, Albin Kurti, is in jail for 10 months now, because he wants liberal democracy be not an UNMIK decree. And who’s a Marxist, with selfish political ambitions, so many, and so ignorantly, argue, to justify their own apathy.

Loads of young people are energized by Kurti’s unflinching idealism, as I am. But few would go out and protest with him. Those who do, are “manipulated” and “caught up in the air” an interviewee would say. But this comes from a professional who belongs to the active generation of the pre-war, and who believes chances have been exhausted for Kosovo people to generate a change by taking the streets. Just like all politicians and leaders today, he calls for patience and democratic behavior. But, as a friend once wrote in a published opinion, if you want to see how ready Kosovars are for democracy, ask for their opinion on “Vetevendosje” (Self-Determination), the political movement in point.

Back to the fellowship, I have to admit this has been a tremendous experience for me. I have been reassured of several life facts that I previously dared not speak aloud of. One of those facts is that not always one needs to stick to conventions and pursue the safest path, in order to accomplish something which can benefit someone beyond your community.

However, I remain critical of the trend that opportunities for societies, like those in Balkan, come in specially tailored packages, sometimes solely to bring back specific results that meet the expectations of the provider. I do believe it is important to pay close attention not only to the need for opportunities as such, but the aspects of the context that are not immediately visible. Opportunities should correspond with the urgency of the situation and the changes needed to be made now.

No opportunity will fully work unless the capacities of these societies to generate own energy for change are not scrutinized and made use of. Likewise, the energy of the people, in these societies, will never be translated into a power for change unless there is sincere approach to and understanding of the urgency from those who are able to constructively and effectively help this happen.

Understandably, many attempts for change sometimes only make sense in long-term, such as a better education system, or a democratic society, but ignoring the present pressures, or dealing with them with a neglect and shallow dedication, will not help raise the necessary awareness among the right people for the long-term change to begin.

Sokol Ferizi

October 15, 2007

The occasion was to mark the completion of the Balkan fellowship for journalistic excellence for 2007, an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

BIRN Albania Project Manager & Editor Besar Likmeta presented the publication and announced the next fellowship project, which is to start in January 2008. This year’s Albanian fellow, Altin Raxhimi, also held a presentation, describing to the guests his experience with the programme.

The book launch made it into the news on Albanian public service television, TVSH, and on the 24-hours news channel NTV.