On Tuesday we had a lecture with Siniša Šikman from CANVAS who was a part of the student movement who was active under the regime of Slobodan Miloševic in Serbia. The organization’s history starts with the regime of Miloševic. The organisation that Šikman was a part of was under the mass protest was called Otpor and they grew larger with time, but they did not want any leaders in fear of ending up like their government. Their goal was to ridicule the regime and to make people laugh at it and by that remove the fear for the government; they also wanted freedom and fair elections.
In 2002 the first free election were held in Serbia and Šikman was one of those that were engaged in rebuilding the country. Many people became interested in the work that Šikman and his fellows did so many travelled to Belgrade to learn from them and their experience. This new founded interest sparked the initiative to make curriculum; books that others could use to learn from and soon they started training others as well. This was the creation of CANVAS (Centre for Applied Non Violent Actions and Strategies). They wanted to continue their work in a more structured way as well as working for improving non-violent solutions that would work well in different situations and for different activist groups.
CANVAS have managed to accomplish some things over the years; they have had more than 123 workshop conferences, with more than 2000 attending, three masters’ programmes at the University of Belgrade, and they have trained several organizations that have been successful in their home countries ; Georgia, Ukraine, Lebanon and the Maldives, to mention a few. In addition they have on-going projects in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Belarus, Burma, Vietnam, Tibet and the Middle East. This is quite an accomplishment since they are currently only eleven working in the organisation at the moment. CANVAS are an growing organisation and they are an inspiration for others; we in SAIH-Ås wish them good luck in their future work.
