At the beginning of the 1990s, Split was a gloomy place. The military front line was about 30 kilometres away as the crow flies. The city was more or less cut off from northern Croatia, and the journey to the capital often took 12 hours. In Croatia, Split carried the flattering title of the grad slučaj (the problem city due to the omnipresent problems of drug addiction and crime). I was one of the many refugees in a boys’ boarding school, trying to understand the world’s workings with my adolescent mind. The collage of impressions that built this understanding included news from the war front, rumours from the streets, news from Croatia, Bosnia, and the world, scenes of soldiers waiting for transport to the front, drunk soldiers returning from the front, and people who, with the arrival of spring, went to the Riva to enjoy the peace and tranquillity provided by the Mediterranean scenery of pine trees, sea, and sky. Dealers and drug addicts were an integral part of the scenery and every social circle.
Few of us adolescent refugees had severe problems with hard drugs. Drugs were expensive, and we were broke. «For free» was our motto and our most profound value. A friend and I watched an amateur film about Jesus’ temptation in the desert, organized by a Protestant church from the USA, which had decided to start its missionary activities in Split. The film was poorly projected on a sheet hung on the wall, but it was a free cinema trip in the middle of winter. We could sit in a warm room for an hour and get cakes and juices. I attended the Hare Krishna ashram for a while. On Sundays, they held lectures followed by vegetarian meals. After a while, they clarified that they expected some donations as compensation for the meals, so I parted ways with them. It’s a shame because their food was delicious. At one point, Jehovah’s Witnesses showed interest in me. But since they weren’t ready to spice up the Bible message with some concrete foods, I also had to part ways with them.
So, not everything was terrible in my existence, but it was pretty bad in Split. The scenery of drug addicts, criminals, soldiers, stressed and underpaid teachers in school, and caregivers in the boarding school was complemented by the army of former workers from the collapsed Split industry. I made a good deal with one of them. I had a calendar with pictures of Elvis Presley, and he had a nearly empty box of the cheapest cigarettes, Kolumbo («Columbus»). He wanted Elvis, and I wanted cigarettes, so we traded. We walked away from each other with smiles on our faces.
I was quite confused, scared, and maybe, most importantly, poor at the time. But looking back from a distance today, Split had it worse than I did. We refugee adolescents gathered in our rooms and deliberated about life and the world. We were pretty different from each other and had different views on life and the world, but we almost all agreed on one thing: «Split is crap». No matter how hard it was for us, and although we all adopted a dose of nihilism, the city seemed to have fewer chances than we did.
In such a situation, somewhere in the spring of 1995, some psychologists from the MIRTA association came to the boarding school. It is important to note that this began a new economic and social system in Croatia. Socialism had ended just five years earlier. New words for new phenomena of the new system were just being introduced, and «association» was one of them. So we didn’t understand what they were doing or who they were. We only figured out that they were psychologists. «Association», «project» – what could that be? We didn’t even care. They offered something – acting, dancing, comic strip courses, some self-improvement workshops (whatever that was supposed to be), and apparently some trip with food and drinks- all FREE. How could we say no?
Those people
Thirty years later, while conducting field research for this project (in the meantime, I learned what the word «project» means), I found out that the name of the MIRTA association was an acronym around which a group of individuals, primarily psychologists inspired by reality therapy, gathered. These people later left their mark on the Split NGO scene. Their enthusiasm and belief in positive change set them apart in my experience of that period. The psychological self-improvement workshops that included envisioning the future, identifying one’s strengths, and recognizing what we could do to achieve our goals (which also needed to be defined) sometimes felt disjointed and even created discomfort. Igor Longo, one of those psychologists, told me in an interview thirty years later that much of their activities at the time were improvisations. They had no prior experience working in such situations and were trying to apply their skills and knowledge, shaped in a civilian context, to an extraordinary situation. But that improvisation wasn’t what felt disjointed in 1995. What felt disjointed were the prompts to think about the future, the prompts for optimism, and the seriousness with which they insisted on hope and change. As a feeling and perspective, despair was the standard for us living in Split at that time. Cynicism in the speech was considered good taste. Respectable people who care about themselves wouldn’t openly express hope and faith in change and community action.
And yes, some volunteers working with us shared their frustrations. People in city government institutions were often uncooperative. Relatives and friends wondered why someone would spend time on such things, etc. It should be noted that apart from the general despair that pervaded Split at that time, an obstacle to successful volunteer work in the NGO sector was that the non-governmental organization sector, as a sort of intermediary institution, was beginning. The NGO sector faced the huge task of achieving social recognition, creating a legal framework, creating a positive media image, networking, and securing stable financial resources.
The 1990s were unfavourable for the NGO sector in Croatia. Citizens held negative attitudes towards associations, and the government actively sabotaged the development of the NGO sector. Reliance on external funding sources made existing associations easy targets for accusations of being foreign agents. Funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundation was precarious in this regard. I remember one of the rumours from that time on the streets of Split, which claimed that some associations were involved in cross-border child trafficking. The rumour referred to the practice of sending children from war-affected areas to countries like Italy for rest and de-traumatization. The experience of one of our interviewees, who was a school-age girl at the time, regarding her trip to Italy goes like this:
«They took us everywhere. We went swimming. I remember that Francesca made super calzones, pizzas, and a ton of pasta, and we ate pasta all the time and mostly just had some super food, swimming, and fun. Nothing bad happened. Everything was relaxed, and there was constant laughter» (Deša 1.6.2023)
Another challenge for humanitarians in Split was the situation the citizens of Split were in. The average salary for those lucky enough to still receive it was around 150 DM (75 EUR) in 1992, and many citizens expressed dissatisfaction with what they perceived as the attention and finances directed towards helping refugees. For example, from 1992 to 1995, the European Union provided 171,000 tons of food through various programs, averaging 5 to 6 thousand tons per month. Other donors provided 130,000 tons of humanitarian aid during that time. The flow of humanitarian assistance decreased in early 1994, while the needs of displaced refugees and other needy people remained around 12,000 tons per month. In such a difficult economic situation, humanitarian work on refugee aid projects for some international humanitarian organizations, which were heavily engaged in Croatia then, could represent a step towards solving one’s existential problems for potential activists. Although stressful and often chaotic during that period, engagement with an international organization frequently ensured a decent salary.
War is over
With the war’s end in Croatia, local humanitarians found new activity niches. Although the war was over, the system still housed a significant number of refugees and displaced persons who couldn’t return to their homes. The return posed a separate challenge, so part of the NGO efforts was directed towards assisting with return-related problems.
Even if we exclude the issue of refugees and displaced persons who still hadn’t returned to their homes, Croatian society was left with enough problems for the NGO sector to address. According to a survey conducted by the United Nations Development Programme, even eleven years after the war, in 2006, every tenth person in Croatia was socially excluded. The legal framework at that time still did not recognize certain categories of social exclusion, such as homelessness, and had no mechanisms to address this problem appropriately.
Searching for new knowledge, a group of social welfare experts from Split travelled to Modena, Italy, in 1995 and were inspired by the principles of volunteer work:
«We then saw that in Modena, which has 180,000 people, every sixth resident […] is involved in some program of helping someone. That was fascinating to us. Every sixth means 30,000 people, which was an additional input for us. And it was then an additional strong impulse for us to wake up in Split. And Split woke up […] We got inspired in various directions. We conveyed our experiences and insights much more enthusiastically. We spoke, talked, and encouraged with enthusiasm» (Longo, 1.7.2023)
The enthusiasm of the NGO sector, fortunately, met with a favourable reaction from the city authorities, and the culture of primary social care in Split could begin to change:
«There was an expansion of hopelessness. Split was then at the bottom on many levels – industrially and economically. Hotels were all devastated as they had been housing refugees for years. And in that context, there was an economic transformation […] but also a human one. But, as in life, when you hit the bottom, you will start to rise. And Split started to rise. The city social welfare department fought for funds for the NGO sector in the city council […] we worked together on a strategy. The MI Association initiated the establishment of a forum of associations, which allowed associations to participate and discuss the common problems of the sector actively […] we obtained a complete structure for empowering the NGO sector» (Barbarić, 28.6.2024)
A look back
Thirty years after encountering the Mirta association, I found a completely different situation in Split. In the meantime, the city, primarily thanks to tourism, has transformed from an infrastructurally neglected misfortune town into a beautiful destination. The NGO sector in Split has gained social recognition, and the volunteer scene is vibrant.
Đordana Barabarić from MOST received the City of Split’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021, and the association MOST received the Collective Award of the City of Split in 2016. Nives Ivelja, whom I met in 1995 at the boys’ boarding school, is currently the director of the MI association and served as the president of the first session of the National Committee for the Development of Volunteering. Their efforts, along with those of their colleagues from the NGO sector, have resulted in, among other things, amendments to the Volunteer Act in 2021 and changes to the Residence Act.
In recent years, Split’s media have readily reported on volunteer actions initiated by local associations, and all members of the associations I interviewed happily highlight the willingness of fellow citizens to participate in community work. Even before the war, NGO activities emerged in Split, where various interest groups of citizens, such as parents’ associations or professional societies like the psychological society, sought to address current problems and find solutions. However, the NGO sector took its full form during the war, using available resources in the form of their expertise and the organizational and material support of international organizations, often driven by an admirable dose of enthusiasm, to help the vast number of refugees and displaced persons housed in Split at the time. After the war, the need for work with refugees ceased, but the now well-trained members of the NGO sector used their skills to change their city’s empathetic structure gradually.
Petar Bagarić is a researcher and employee at the Institute for Ethnology and Folkloristics in Zagreb. His areas of interest have included dervish practices, forced migrations, the anthropology of labour, the anthropology of the senses, the anthropology of organization, and phenomenological anthropology.
