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The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Fellows > Past Fellows and ... > Summer Interns 2003 > Marta Schaaf and ...

Marta Schaaf and BOSFAM (Eastern Bosnia)

Marta Schaaf graduated from Smith College in 1999, where she studied European History and spent her junior year in Geneva, Switzerland. She is currently studying at Columbia University. Marta Schaaf learned about The Advocacy Project through AP’s newsletter and contacted us about an internship while studying for a Master’s degree at Columbia University, New York. Her area of studies is southeastern Europe, human rights, and political development.


Marta Schaaf visits the village of Suceska, near Srebrenica, with
Zulfo Salihovic from Drina, a Srebrenica NGO

Like all of AP’s 2003 summer interns, Marta had impressive prior work experience. In 2000 she volunteered for Balkans Sunflowers, a grassroots NGO in Macedonia, and was assigned to work with Roma refugees from Kosovo. She taught English and computers and coordinated Sunflower’s activities with other INGOs. She also assisted the local Macedonian Helsinki Committee and other local agencies with grant-writing and English language publicity. (She remains remain involved with Balkan Sunflowers, serving on the Board and coordinating US-based grant writing.)

Marta next took a job in New York, Doctors of the World (Medecins du Monde). After a year, she moved to Kosovo, where she directed public health projects. Some dealt exclusively with public health (such as TB control), but others involved working with civil society. For example, she helped to set up a health clinic for Roma, and worked to develop the capacity of local disability advocacy agencies.


Beba Hadzic (bottom right), Director of Bosfam, with two weavers at the Bosfam center in Tuzla.

By the time she contacted The Advocacy Project she had developed a deep commitment to civil society development in the region. She had worked in Kosovo, visited the Republika Srpska, studied Serbian in Belgrade, and acquired a real sense of what conditions are like in the Balkans.

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“In general, I was very pleased with my summer, and I think AP offered a unique program”

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A Muslim woman at Potocari, where 282 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica
massacre were buried on July 11th 2003. Photo - Aspen Brinton

All of this prepared her well for working with Bosfam, the Bosnian women’s group that supports displaced and refugee Bosnian women in Eastern Bosnia. As visitors to the AP site will know, Bosfam is based in the Bosnian town of Tuzla, and many of its members lost male relatives in the notorious massacre in Srebrenica, in July 1995.

When Marta applied for an internship, the Advocacy Project was in the middle of an extensive project of support for Bosfam, which included promoting Bosfam’s carpets and designing a website for the organization. Marta’s internship took place within the context of this larger project.

Given that Marta’s background was in NGO administration and management, she thought it made most sense to focus on the following:

• Project strategic planning (definition of organizational mandate and priorities, possible ways to address these);
• Development of goals, objectives and activities for particular projects;
• Articulation of how these activities could be measured and proven;
• Assistance in marketing this to funders;
• Possible donor identification and grant writing

Photo - Aspen Brinton

Marta’s blogs make it clear that her three months with Bosfam were interesting and fulfilling. She was the main “star” of the article on the intern blogging that was published in Wired’s online magazine. She also appears in a film about Bosfam that was shot by Aspen Brinton in the summer of 2003 and is now available through the AP website. She co-authored, with Peter Lippman, a proposal for developing a Bosfam resource center. (Any profits from the Advocacy Project’s promotional activities on behalf of Bosfam in the US will go to this proposal.)

Marta wrote the following in a final assessment of her internship: “In general, I was very pleased with my summer, and I think AP offered a unique program. I think because the program is so attractive you would get quite a few qualified applicants. While I was often frustrated with Bosfam, I think this is part of the game when one works with a local NGO. I support Bosfam, and respect the work of the organization.”

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“It became almost immediately apparent to me that Bosfam’s first need was to improve its business practices and to begin to make the leap from a one-woman NGO to a small business (not that it will ever completely make this transition).”

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At the same time, Marta also made it clear that she was somewhat hampered by Bosfam’s lack of administrative capacity. Like so many of AP’s partner organizations, Bosfam depends heavily on its dynamic Director and founder, Beba Hadzic. Marta found herself acting as an assistant to Beba, and absorbed in the day to day running of the office, instead of being allowed to use her initiative and put her considerable experience to work

It became almost immediately apparent to me that Bosfam’s first need was to improve its business practices and to begin to make the leap from a one-woman NGO to a small business (not that it will ever completely make this transition).



Moreover, Bosfam needs assistance in more than just selling additional carpets. If AP makes a decision to work on more than just pure communications capacity-building, (and move into helping Bosfam to become more businesslike) then AP’s support should include efforts to change the way Bosfam does business, rather than just enabling the continuation of the status quo. Bosfam lacks quality control, any kind of business plan, or mechanisms to determine what products are the most sell-able.”

This is good advice, and it will be taken to heart as AP plans its 2004 program of support for Bosfam.

• Read Marta's blog
• Email Marta
  

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