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• A Call From Mozaik: Please Help This Courageous Social Entrepreneur!
• Return to the Balkans: South-East European Research Centre (SEERC)
• Catalyst in the Balkans–Presentation at Skoll World Forum
• Article on Social Business for “Marketing Serbia” magazine
• Discussion at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting
• And Now, I Leave the Balkans
• The Last Day, “Trusting the Journey” and Things to Come
• An Organic Food Company Began When a Young Girl”s Laughter Stopped
• So What about the Men-?Where Are They All?
• Two Bosnian Feminist Organisations

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Outsiders have been messing about with the Balkan region for millennia. Greeks, Romans, Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, French, Brits, Russians and Americans-?all have secured influence in the region and subsequently used it-?rarely with “the local interest” foremost in their minds. Even when their intentions are good they bring “ideas and theories” about what the locals “really need” that are rarely based on local knowledge and, unsurprisingly, rarely seem to do any good. Thus, when I visited last year I came to listen and learn, not to help or fix. But when people in the local community come and ask for help, I do believe it is important to reply and try to offer what is sought. A recent post discussed a circumstance where this occurred in
Thessaloniki, Greece, where I may be able to help. Another “cry for help” has come from Zoran Puljic of the Mozaik Foundation in Bosnia Herzegovina. And best of all he most needs the help of other locals. The role I would like to play, forgive the plug, is to be a “catalyst”?.
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When I returned from my visit to the Balkans last year I had no idea when I might next visit the region. Next week I will be visiting Thessaloniki, Greece as Member of the International Advisory Board of the SEERC. I focused on this excellent educational institution, part of the CITY College in Thessaloniki and the University of Sheffield in the UK, in a blog post. It is one of the few educational institutions that focus on students from throughout the Balkan region and I met them during my visit last year. It is a pleasure to return and, more importantly, to be able to try to assist the institution in its development. Other Balkan follow-ups have recently taken place and I look forward to more in due course. Readers of this blog who wish to highlight their relevant activities are invited to get in touch.

Last week was the annual Skoll World Forum at the Said Business School at Oxford University. I believe it is the premier meeting for social entrepreneurship each year and as ever, a large and impressive group of people attended. The keynote address was given by ex-President Jimmy Carter, probably the most successful “ex” in recent history. His stirring performance highlighted what was an excellent, if somewhat US-centric, conference. For the first time Catalyst had been asked to speak at the Conference and I was delighted beyound measure to be asked to talk about our “Catalyst in the Balkans” trip last summer. Jessica Shortall, the architect of “Catalyst in Thailand” also hosted a session at Skoll.
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The article below was written by Rodney Schwartz of Catalyst on 11 October 2007, at the request of Veran Matic, for “Marketing Serbia” magazine. It is featured in the latest issue.
We would welcome your comments, criticisms and challenges on it.

For reasons that are too numerous to list (although turning 50 was one of them!), I journeyed from London to the Balkans and back by train this summer, to spend seven weeks in a region I did not understand and knew little about. What was clear to me was that the reputation of this geographical area in the West was awful and that I was certain to find interesting examples of positive innovations in social business and social enterprise, areas where Catalyst, the company I manage, concentrates its expertise in the UK.

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Sept 27, London- IWPR hosted a provocative discussion this week featuring Rod Schwartz on ‘Social Business in the Balkans’. A Senior executive with extensive experience in the finance and charity sectors, Rod- CEO of Catalyst Fund Management & Research Ltd, - presented his reflections and conclusions from an extensive recent tour of Southeast Europe. In a wide ranging discussion with a diverse group from the business, diplomatic, human rights and media/expert community, Rod outlined his key impressions, including:

• The region’s continuing isolation and restricted movement and infrastructure
• A widespread denial of responsibility for the conflict and lingering tensions;
• The weakness and artificiality of many of the existing governing/political structures

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The astute among you would have realised by now that the dates of the blog posts have not always corresponded to the dates of travel-?in fact they rarely have. Mostly, the posts have been drafted from notes taken during the meetings. This post however was begun on my laptop literally as my train pulled out of Zagreb’s main train station (I promise!!). Although the return journey will take me geographically through Slovenia on the way out, this trip has officially ended-?when I disembark I will be in Salzburg, Austria. Croatia may once have been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but the empire was never Balkan, although it did its share to make the Balkans what it is today, and like many external powers, its influence was generally negative and directed towards the needs of its citizens, not its conquered subjects.
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As ever I awoke to do my exercises, rushed to breakfast and stole a few minutes before my first meeting to sit down at this computer and try (desperately but always unsuccessfully) to catch up on my blogging. This was to be the last day of my trip and it looked like it would be typical; a variety of meetings, thanks to a host of different sources on an array of topics. Right at the end things did not go as planned and took off in an unexpected direction, but this was very much in keeping with the spirit of the trip. A friend of mine called Peter Tyson urged me to just let things happen this way-?”trust the journey”?, he would say. A very sensible bit of advice-?and when I followed it, I was never disappointed.
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One morning Srdjan (pronounced sir-jan) Mladinic, an alcoholic, was nursing a hangover. He awoke, groggy and in pain, to hear several children playing outside of his home in Split, Croatia. The children were all playing and laughing-?his 4 year old daughter among them. The conversation turned to their parents-?”what does your dad do?” they all asked each other. Srdjan”s daughter stumbled through some set of excuses, before being teased by a boy who said, “Oh, we all know your dad”s just a drunk!”?-?and his daughter, a relatively happy child up until that point simply stopped laughing. Read more

As I finished the last post about women and women”s organisations, I noticed that many of my previous posts, specifically those about Bosnia, concerned mostly women. I did not specifically seek out women or women”s organisations, but on reflection it seems that an overwhelming majority of the folks I have written about from Bosnia were women. So the question is where are the men?

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During the course of my stay in Sarajevo I had meetings with two organisations which were feminist or focused on women. One was rather large and although it was founded to focus on women in Bosnia it now provides services to women in troubled countries all over the world. The other is right at the other end of the scale and is just in the process of coming together at present, with all of the excitement and challenges of an early stage endeavour. Let me tell you about each of them.
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• Catalyst in Argentina
• Catalyst in Georgia and Armenia
• Catalyst in Mozambique
• Catalyst in Micronesia
• Catalyst in Canada
• Catalyst in Thailand
• Catalyst in Sri Lanka

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• Adore Chocolates
  Fair Trade Chocolate from Serbia (note, site is in Serbian only)
• B92
  An independent news organisation based in Belgrade
• Balkan Community Initiatives Fund
  Supporting people to take active part in improving the life in their communities
• Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
  Editors and trainers that enable Balkan journalists to produce in-depth analytical and investigative journalism.
• BHcrafts
  BHcrafts unites creative, humanitarian, business and psychotherapeutic characteristics to make clothing and decorative items, involving women from BiH.
• Bio Bulgaria Ltd.
  Set up by Lubomir Nokov and Magdalena Maleeva, Bulgaria”s former Top 5 tennis player, to develop mark high-quality organic food in Bulgaria.
• Bulgarian Donors Forum
  Serves and represents philanthropists and charitable organizations, working in and for Bulgaria.
• CITY Liberal Studies
  Provides students from the Balkan and neighbouring region with a high-quality academic experience and aiding them in developing well-rounded personalities for a more civilised world.
• CURE
  A feminist NGO doing terrific things across the Balkan region
• Donacije Info
  Connects Croatian donors with noble causes; assists both in the process.
• ECON
  A foundation focused on sustainable development opportunities in BiH
• Eko Mavrovic
  An organic food producer in Coatia, started by a former world heavywieght boxer. Link is to wikipedia as the site has no English version.
• European Agency for Reconstruction
  Manages the EU’s main assistance programmes in Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.
• European Fund for Southeast Europe
  Providing long-term funding to local partner lending institutions for granting sub-loans to micro and small enterprises and private households in Southeast Europe
• Gorichka
  A non-profit Bulgarian environmental web site–one of several environmental projects under the name of Gorichka (”little forest”)
• Green Visions
  Dedicated to promoting and preserving the traditional ancient highland lifestyles of BiH
• Institute for War and Peace Reporting
  Build peace and democracy through free and fair media (spawned the BIRN)
• Montenegro Adventures
  Sustainable tourism in Montenegro
• Non-profit and Self Sustainability Team (NESsT)
  Development and support for social enterprises
• Non-Profit Enterprise and Self-sustainability Team (NESsT)
  Works to solve critical social problems in emerging markets by developing and supporting social enterprises
• Reconstruction Women’s Fund - Serbia
  To support women’s NGOs in Serbia
• Renova
  Sponsor of business, economy and technological developments in the Balkans
• Responsible Business Inititive Serbia/Smart Kolektiv
  Promote CSR in Serbia; initiating various activities involving cooperation across sectors
• SMS
  Focused on organic food products produced primarily in the Dalmatian region, this socially-oriented business has been a catalyst of other social enterprises in Croatia.
• South Balkan Fund
  Early Stage and Expansion of SMEs
• The Green Network of Vojvodina (Serbia)
  Promotes and supports environmental protection and sustainable development on local, regional, national and international level
• The Red House-Sofia
  Organises and presents socio-political as well as artistic, cultural and training programmes
• Traditzia Bulgarian Crafts
  Helps socially disadvantaged artisans to help themselves through craft consultation, art therapy, business education and direct market access
• Zaedno (together)
  Bulgarian non-governmental, non-commercial and non-political youth organization working in the public benefit, with some focus on the promotion of tools for electronic communication enabling the effective participation of youth in building a civil society