Alice Rowan Swanson Fellow Ana Gvozdić brings human rights project to her hometown
February 20th, 2025 | Alumni, Fellowships, IHP, SIT Study Abroad
By Joanna Tanger
Ana Gvozdić’s childhood in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, was marked by the legacy of war, but a summer youth program played an important role in her adolescence. “Mostar Summer Youth Program was a space where I could share a classroom with other students regardless of our backgrounds, and connect and learn,” she says when discussing the divisions along ethnic lines that caused segregation in her hometown’s schools.
In spring 2024, Gvozdić won the Alice Rowan Swanson Fellowship and implemented the project “Inclusive Human Rights Education: The Mostar Summer Youth Program Expansion” to further address the division in the city where she was born and lived for 15 years.
“To come back, teach human rights advocacy to the teenagers from my hometown, and support other international teachers in cultivating this important space was really meaningful.”
The Alice Rowan Swanson Fellowship enables SIT alumni to return to their program country to pursue development projects. After completing an SIT program focused on peace and conflict studies in 2020, Gvozdić applied for and was awarded the fellowship last year. Her project's goals were to contribute to human rights through youth education in Mostar by collaborating with the UčiMo Foundation on their flagship project, the Mostar Summer Youth Program (MSYP). MSYP is a three-week education program led by local and international volunteers. Gvozdić’s project included a local sensitivity training for MSYP staff members, aimed at empowering them to create a positive learning environment in the aftermath of conflict, and a human rights advocacy course for youth aged 14-19 from Mostar and the surrounding areas.
The human rights advocacy course started with an introduction to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To better understand the document and apply it to the world around them, Gvozdić tasked students with cutting out articles from the newspaper and connecting them with articles from the Declaration. This provided students with the opportunity to practice articulating examples of human rights and human rights violations in their communities.
At the conclusion of the project, both students and staff responded favorably to Gvozdić’s courses. Their strong, positive responses indicate a continued need and interest in a local sensitivity module for staff and continued human rights programming for youth participants.
The project solidified Gvozdić’s career aspirations and interest in inclusive education. "Working on this project provided me with a valuable lesson regarding my career interests. It reminded me how passionate I am about inclusive education and providing empowering experiences for young people,” she says. “Additionally, compared to my previous experiences with summer youth programs, as part of this fellowship, I worked more closely with staff. I realized that I enjoy curriculum development, both in terms of planning my course and supporting staff with their lesson plans, as well as staff onboarding more broadly connected to the teacher training I led."
This experience made such a difference for Gvozdić that she decided to join the UčiMo Foundation’s program strategy committee to continue working on program development. “Working closely with MSYP, as a program that I really appreciated back when I was a teenager in Mostar, reignited my commitment to this initiative. I joined two other program alumni to work on an impact study that will assess the program’s impact over the past ten years and identify points of improvement.”
Gvozdić is also currently working towards a master’s in Holocaust and genocide studies at Uppsala University. As part of her degree, she did a ten-week internship with a professor, working on a paper about the perpetrators of war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the process of transitional justice.
SIT is currently accepting applications for the spring 2025 Alice Rowan Swanson Fellowship. The deadline to apply is March 1, 2025. The Fellowship was established in 2009 by the family of SIT Nicaragua 2006 alumna Alice Rowan Swanson as a living tribute to her life, her passion for bridging cultures and helping others, and the role that SIT Study Abroad played in her life. A 2007 Amherst College graduate, Alice was killed while riding her bike to work in 2008. The fellowships are awarded twice annually to SIT Study Abroad and International Honors Program alumni to return to their program country and pursue further development projects benefiting human rights in that region.