What do you do when you live in a country where neighbors have been fighting neighbors in a civil war? How do you help people learn to live in peace?

One of the things you do is to reach out to people — especially to young people — and help them realize how much they have in common. When people have a better understanding of how their neighbors are like them, they can begin the difficult work of learning to live together peacefully, without fighting.

That's the challenge John Crownover takes on every day in his job as a Program Manager for CARE's Civil Society Development Program in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It's difficult work, but John enjoys it because he feels it is making a difference. He knows that his work will not just affect the way people treat each other today and tomorrow, but whether they can live peacefully together for years and decades into the future.

CARE's Civil Society Program works in five countries that have had civil wars over the last decade: Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Can you find these countries on a map? John supervises 13 staff people working in these countries. He and his staff travel from country to country helping people learn what it means to live peacefully. They teach people how to participate in a democracy. They teach people how to stand up for their rights. And they teach people — young people especially — how to have respect for people who might have a different religion or a different skin color or come from a different country or town than they do.

As we will learn over the next few weeks, people in Bosnia have had to deal with these types of problems for many hundreds of years. Bosnia has been conquered many times over the years by different empires and different countries. And each time it has been conquered, new people have moved in. But these different groups of people don't always get along and don't always trust or respect each other. In some instances, groups of people have been fighting on and off for hundreds of years. That makes learning to live peacefully very difficult.

But living in peace is an important goal, especially in a part of the world that has not known much peace in its history. John and his staff want to help the people of Bosnia learn what it is like to live in peace without having to be afraid of wars or attacks. And they especially want children to learn about peace so that when they grow up they will know how to live in their country in peace.