Civil courage: Good people in an evil time, building and promoting resilience.

From the perspective of the continuing relevance of studying the efforts directed towards rebuilding a resilient community in the former Yugoslavia, and more specifically, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the experiences of a local non-governmental and non-profit organization are both valuable and relevant. Eleven years after the violence was ended by international intervention, the region still suffers many serious social ills. Life is incomparably more difficult now than at the outbreak of the war fifteen years ago. Despite the tragic fact that the violence was politically initiated and orchestrated, reconstruction efforts have often been designed along ethnic-nationalist distinctions, thus further engraving lines of social division between people. Social incoherence did not lead to the violence. But, it has become one of the tragic consequences of the war, the peace agreement that divided the country along ethnicnationalist lines by constitution, and, to some extent, of many efforts for resilience and reconciliation. As a result, large scale activities aiming for resilience have perhaps left the region less resilient than it was. What does this mean for the understanding of a resilient community and what can the experiences of a practitioner/an NGO contribute?