On Saturday 18th March there will be a special event in Newcastle to celebrate the links between North East England and Bosnia. All are welcome, especially those involved in education and in trade unions. The event will hear from a number of speakers related to educational and trade union work around the links between the North East and Bosnia.

Then we will plan to do groundbreaking work over the next two years in the areas of education and trade union activism.

We will plan to increase awareness of what happened in Bosnia in the 1990’s, how we can learn from it here and how we can work to get more schools to teach about these issues. We will plan to get the Bosnia Education Trust into more schools and also strengthen the Newcastle schools of sanctuary scheme.

We will also plan to let more people in the North East know about the strong trade union links between Bosnia and the North East in the past, how miners in Bosnia helped miners in this country during the 1984/5 strike and how trade unionists in the North East helped Bosnians during the war in the 1990’s, through Workers Aid for Bosnia. We will also plan how we can strengthen the international links between trade unions in the Northeast and Bosnia.

The story of North East links with Bosnia can be found on the NELHS website here: From-Tuzla-to-Tyneside.docx (live.com)

Speakers include:

Smajo Beso, Bosnia Education Trust

Shirley Allen-Jackson, WEA Area Education Manager Union Learning

Rosie Tapsfield, Newcastle Schools of Sanctuary

Erin Parker, daughter of Workers Aid for Bosnia NE coordinator Tony Parker 

10 a.m. – 1 p.m. Saturday 18th March
Bewick Room, City Library, New Bridge Street West, Newcastle, NE1 8AX

Please join us for what will be an uplifting and important meeting.

For more information please contact Peter Sagar at