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BALKAN SUNFLOWERS UPDATE 7 (April 22)
A network for grassroot relief and reconciliation work
for the Balkans.
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latest news and original SUNFLOWER plan:
http://www.ddh.nl/org/balkansunflower

Balkan Sunflowers
c/o postfach 1219, D-14806 Belzig
+ 49 33841 30670  (30671 fax)
wam@mir.org
applications: steffie@mir.org
info: lists@mir.org
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Account: SUNFLOWER Accountnr 160 160 1
Bank Oekobank Frankfurt (Germany)
BLZ 500 901 00
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INTRO
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After this European Balkan Sunflower preparation meeting weekend I
travelled home and was looking at the german landscape, the magazins
I bought for the trip all had stories from Kosov@ and refugees. The
one even worst as the other. I looked out the window and thought,
5 or so years ago Al Gore said about me and my diary, that that
were things government can't do, but people can, and that that is
the hope for the future. Can somebody tell this person that I am
back on the net, and that the net is full of sunflowers. Can't he organise
that the USA government in comparance what the war is costing the USA at
this
already, is the amount we need to do "our kind of work" less than
peanuts. So maybe somebody should really inform him about us.
He already knows me, it seems in his speech:-)
At this time we are writing new Internet history, we, all together.
I hope we can hang in there together. Let the Sunflowers blossom again !
And thanks to the people, who are now still running SuncoKret in Croatia
for their nice mail of support and there willingness to help also refugees
in Macedonia and Albania, allthough they have still a lot of work with
the refugees from the last war in this area. I am very afraid that it will
take some more years, so we have to use our energy well. As Vanja said
small steps also make a big step in the future.

FIRST EUROPEAN PREPARATION MEETING
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More information and addresses of SCI and CCIVS you can find under:
http://ines.gn.apc.org/ines/sci/

TECHNICAL INFORMATION
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Thanks to the help of a lot of people we have gather almost all the
technical information like visas, medical preparation, insurrance,
transportation, languages courses, etc., by now you will be finding
it on our website.

A SIT(uation) REP(ort) from Albania
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From our contact in Tirana, who works for IRC:

"I am working in 7 camps, which have up to 2000 people, almost all
women and children.  So, there is a big need for childrens toys and
activities as well as counselling and activities for the mothers.
People coming to work in some camps should be experienced,
professional (social workers, child minders, kindergarten workers,
teachers, , psychologist, counsellers, but also experienced suncokret and
pakrac
volunteers).  They should be well aware of
the situation, and willing to cope with the isolation and
difficult conditions (sometimes dangerous in teh countryside, with
bandits around).  Most of the camps are miles from the nearest road,
let alone town, so there are virtually no amenities.
1. RUBIK  (camp led by Italians) I wrote about that camp in the
previous message. Near the camp there is that town, where is possible
to find the accomodation for volunteers. Just opposit to camp there
is a church/monastiry of some sort. In there, there is a group of
nuns from Ireland (? strange but true), who are allready for severall
years there since troubles. I talked to nuns and they were saying
it would be extreemly great if vol's would come. I will visit camp on
wednesday and talk to the italian manager (I couldn't get hold of him
before)
2. BURRAL is the camp also runned by Italians, and the camp manager Marko
is keen to get volunteers for activities with children and women. There
are about 2000 people there.
3. BIG  INSITUTE and near that small camp, just receantly established
"BUBQI" where there are 117 people, out of what 54 children, and 8 orphans.
They've got just one toilet ( a big holl in one building). IRC is busy
building some showers and toilets there. It is 1 hour from Tirana.
4. DROJA is huge camp just in process of being established. In two weeks
there are going to be 1500 refugees in buildings and 1000 refugees in tents.
IRC is also setting up the medical clinic and offices. The camp is 1 and
half hour out of Tirana but not in direction to dangerous mountines,
rather in safe countriside.
Tirana is completly safe, but crowded by refugees and internationals.
Lots of restorants, cheep food, lots of meat. During the day it is
safe everywhere, but just during the night it is very dangerous
in those mountines. People are very communicative and friendly"

OUR WEBSITE
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Our website is daily update, a big thanks to those people who are doing it.
We really advice you to look at it since it has a good amounts of links
towards
all websites you may want to find if you want to get information of
our work, the situation in the Balkan, and the work of other organisations

A KITCHEN
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From friends of mine from a Dutch mobil vegetarian kitchen group we got
the offer to get the full equipment for a mobil kitchen for up to 15.000-
20.000 people. We are looking for people who has experiences with big
kitchens (not me, I have other things to do :-)) who are willing to take
this up, get training and so, organise the transport, etc.

www.world.refugee.databank.org
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This is not do by the Balkan Sunflowers !!! But I thought this is
interesting
to be mentioned:

We have built a very powerful web server to run the database on.  The engine
should be complete and in place tomorrow. In the meantime, we are doing it
all manually.  Currently, we have English and Albanian versions, and offers
of help from Greek, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and French translators.  I am
overwhelmed by the responses to my newsgroup post this morning :)
Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to
access the site.  The database will be on a secure SQL server.  One may
enter information about the location of refugees, or their own information
if they are looking for a missing loved one.  The site will be fully
searchable, although not all information in a record will be displayed on a
search result.  This is to protect the personal safety of the participants.
Ideally, everyone who enters a record will also leave an email address where
they may be contacted.  Obviously, for some this will not be possible, so we
will accept email inquiries about those people and refer them to the proper
relief agency.
Importing large amounts of data, such as lists of refugees in the camps,
will not be a problem for us.  We expect to be importing a list of 15,000
later this week.
You may view the preliminary site at www.silent-running.com/kosohelp.htm
It will be moving later this week to it's own domain and server
(www.world.refugee.databank.org) but there will be a forwarding link at the
present location.

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