Katie joined the CIM team on the 1st of September this year. Since then she has been working very diligently and is loving Bosnia, despite the gluten-full cuisine. She loves traveling around Bosnia and discovering Bosnian culture – and is currently working on perfecting her Bosnian coffee-making and newly acquired baklava-baking skills. She also enjoys writing and reading as well as playing piano, cards, and soccer. Her favorite thing, however, is a cup of steaming black coffee with a piece of fine, dark chocolate. She grew up in Wisconsin, where she fell in love with snow, so she can’t wait to see winter in Sanksi Most.
In Wisconsin, she studied German and French and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, so her favorite task at CIM is teaching foreign language classes. In addition to teaching and preparing fun and creative English and German classes with Dino, she also works on project proposals, writing grants, and helps implement some of our community activities – such as movie night!
She was part of the Global Youth Connect delegation, which we hosted in June this year, and came back, because she just couldn’t get enough of us. Katie is also finishing up her M.A. in International Peace and Conflict Resolution at the American University in Washington, DC and is in the final editing stages of her thesis, which is on the role of music and dance in peacebuilding. Her work at CIM coincides with her working as a Boren Fellow. As a Boren Fellow, she is here to observe the relationship between youth and peacebuilding. By the end of her time her she hopes to have a strong command of the Bosnian language and also a better understanding of peacebuilding on the grassroots level, how youth can be incorporated into it, and also how they can become agents of peace and positive social change.
