Lunch with Zeljka

The end of my time in D.C. (for the next few months, at least) is quickly approaching - 3 term papers, 2 finals, and I'll be saying PEACE OUT CUA!!

I had lunch with Zeljka, the institutional advancement officer (a.k.a. fundraiser) at Women for Women International, today. W4W is an organization that works with women survivors of war with a holisitic approach to transform them from victim to survivor to active citizen. I've been volunteering at their headquarters in Van Ness since September and it has been awesome!!! They have programs in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kosovo, in addition to the Middle East & Africa. I hope to visit a Bosnian women's group as part of my ISP project when I'm in Sarajevo (and I'm totally getting an internship at W4W for next summer)... maybe a Kosovar group too, if I can engineer it! Please check out their website and consider supporting W4W.

Anyways, Zeljka is from the Balkans herself (how cool is that?!?). She grew up in Belgrade (the capital of Serbia) and her dad is Croatian. She was so excited to hear about the SIT program and was eager to give me all kinds of information. She's also my lifesaver, becuase I have a huge term paper on NGO management for my social change/int'l development class due next week and I wanted to profile W4W, since I'm already familiar with its mission, vision, and programming. She gave me some good insight on how W4W is organized internally and put me in contact with some of the other officers who can give me even more details. One can only learn so much as a fly on the wall (as a volunteer), so I'm really glad that I had to chance to speak with her.

Before I decided to study abroad in the Balkans, I had never [personally] met anyone from the region before, didn't know anyone who spoke Croatian, and only encountered a few people who could point to any of the countries on a map. Since then, I've talked to so many people who know people/have family there, or speak Croatian (shout out Suzie!), or want to visit me - especially in Dubrovnik. It's really weird how one finds connections like these!

I am so ready for this semester to be over and to get on with the holidays, inauguration, and leaving (Jan 26!) already!!!!!!!!!!