There are decisions that don’t take a lot of deliberating because the solutions impose themselves, the circumstances make them necessary, they are the only option… Then there are others, where you have to weigh things, take and retake their measure before finally making your choice. One such decision for us at the Centre for Nonviolent Action was related to the training for trainers.
The last Training for Trainers was held in 2014. A whole network of people and activities that came out of that training has to a large extent shaped CNA over the past decade. The need for a new training for trainers derives primarily from the fact that trainings have been and remain the basis of our work. That basis, sometimes slightly awkwardly described as capacity building, includes meeting new people, expanding the network of friends, supporters and associates, exchanging ideas, an opportunity to rethink and critique, but also having a clear sense of where the current needs are when it comes to peacebuilding.
Recognised need
In the decade since the last ToT, we held 20 or so different trainings (Basic Training in Peacebuilding, the Mir-paqe Training, Training for Students from BiH) through which we met many people who wanted to and had the potential to expand their knowledge and skills. When? they’d ask about the training for trainers, and we’d usually respond with a vague soon. For us, organising a training for trainers has four phases and takes up 30 working days in total, not to mention the days needed for preparation, which means that a whole year needs to be set aside, most other activities put on hold, internal resources need to be committed to the training for trainers… Between the recognised need and our ability to respond to it was a wall of everyday tasks that we kept sizing up for the most opportune moment to leap over it. Finally, we said that 2025, a whole decade after our last training for trainers, was the moment to take that leap of faith.
That is, in brief, how the seventh training for trainers organised by the Centre for Nonviolent Action came about in April 2025. A total of 90 people who had completed one of the other CNA trainings or those offered by our partner organisations wanted to take part in the training for trainers. It was so challenging to select 18 participants that we ended up selecting 22 and assuming that someone would be bound to cancel. We ended up having 22 participants, with more women than men, as has become common. The average age was 35, with the range going from 23 to 58, and it turned out to be ideal for intergenerational exchange and an interesting mix of energies and life experiences.
The first phase was held in Ulcinj from 4 to 14 April 2025. The first phase is always an opportunity to work on deepening the topics that most participants had encountered in basic training. On the other hand, the first phase is also the time when the group is just getting to know each other and to build mutual trust, which is an important precondition for subsequent phases of training. In a situation where most of the participants know three or four people that they share a powerful common experience with from basic training, building a group without divisions into these small subgroups based on previous contacts is an important step. Also, the first phase of training offers a unique opportunity to start thinking about the training itself and working with the group from the trainers’ perspective.
In the first part, we focused on getting to know each other, building trust within the group, analysing the contexts we come from and topics related to dealing with the past. Among other things, together we tried to understand which of our everyday, human, straightforward needs are met by what we see as destructive dealing with the past in our societies. Fear, distrust, insecurity, our need to maintain a positive self-image, the need to imbue sacrifice with meaning, these are just some of the needs we identified as being important. From there, we tried to define what a process of constructive dealing with the past would look like, given also all these identified needs. We also went back to the issues of violence, conflict resolution and reconciliation in order to find ways to creatively stand up to violence. Finally, the participants agreed on a topic they plan to work on as trainers and the teams they want to work with.
Everything is the same, except it’s not
When I think back to my own expectations of the training for trainers I attended in 2014, I remember a sense of deep disappointment at the very beginning. After a very intense experience at basic training, an experience that in many ways changed and (re)shaped my life, my foremost expectation of the training for trainers was to have all that repeated, just with a different group. This need or search for a paradise from which we had been exiled after the end of basic training is still with me today. The training for trainers brings a different dynamics and a different kind of experience, offering us the opportunity to alternate between letting go and being guided through the training, on the one hand, and pulling back and watching the process of guidance or becoming guides ourselves. There are many challenges. One of them is certainly how to deal with the expectations attached to the training for trainers that are always, consciously or not, based on or compared to what we experienced in basic training. One of the ways we have tried to respond to this challenge already in the first phase is to focus on the relations within the triangle of content-group-individual and to always explain not just how we do something, but also why now. Another challenge is impatience to step into the trainer’s shoes, which tends to push building the group and becoming sensitive to the topics and the range of differences into the background.
We work with an inspiring group that is very dedicated to peacebuilding and has complete trust in the team and the approach practiced by CNA, a group of people hungry for knowledge, rethinking, communication, and sometimes competition. We approach the training for trainers for peacebuilding so that examining possibilities and needs, as well as ways to build peace in the present and future, are primary. Running trainings, working with groups, this is one way of working towards that goal to which we dedicate special attention, because it provides an excellent basis, but it is not an end in itself. Our aim is to empower, expand and network a regional group of people who will contribute to changing our societies in the coming decades. What we have achieved so far gives us reason to believe that we know what it takes.
The training team (Ivana Franović, Nenad Vukosavljević, Nedžad Novalić and Tamara Zrnović) was reinforced in the first phase by Luan Imeri from the Skopje Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution. Luan is the good soul of every training, a longstanding friend and supporter, and it was important to have him onboard in this first phase of the training. Safet Ballazhi helped us with translating from and into Albanian in the first two days of the training. By having consecutive interpretation, we wanted to thank the participants who take part in the training while speaking a non-native language, which requires additional effort, but also to show how it’s possible to do training with interpretation. We owe special thanks to our hosts in Ulcinj, all the lovely people who provide for our comfort during our work and stay.
What follows are working meetings at which teams that have already been formed will work on preparing workshops on the topics they selected themselves. In July, the teams will lead their prepared workshops and have the opportunity to step into the trainers’ shoes. Apart from selecting topics and preparing workshops, this will also be an opportunity for mutual learning through feedback in a safe space and from a group that has built sufficient trust and openness.
