Chris Kelly is PPC for Dudley South and is one of 30 Conservatives who have been volunteering this week as part of Project Maja, the party's social action project in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
I am writing this from the hills above Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the end of day three of Project Maja, the Conservative Party's social action project organised by Baroness Warsi and her team at CCHQ.
Most participants arrived into Sarajevo airport, which only 14 years ago was the scene of fierce fighting, late afternoon on Monday. After a two and a half hour drive we were in Potacari, an industrial area where, in July 1995, more than 8,000 people were massacred.
A local widow explained what had happened to her husband at the former battery factory which was used to hold thousands of refugees whilst Dutch UN peacekeepers were present in the town. We watched a moving short film about the events of 1995 in a converted part of the factory and walked to the memorial at Potacari's mass graveyard which was opened in 2003 by Bill Clinton, US President at the time of the war. Countless white headstones glistened in the early evening sunlight.
The next day saw the projects get underway including finishing off a newly built house for a war widow and refurbishing an IT suite at the local secondary school, complete with ten brand new computers. When the school reopened in 1995 there were only 14 children left on the school register following the massacre and the mass exodus of refugees from Srebrenica. That evening William Hague welcomed delegates to the project over an informal group dinner at our accommodation.
Day three saw an early start to hand over the IT suite to the headmaster at 7.30am followed by a car journey back up to the village in which we are working in the hills surrounding Srebrenica. The Shadow Foreign Secretary formally handed over the keys of the new home to the widow and project members then got back down to work on several projects around the village including creating a football pitch with Tobias Ellwood MP.
We have another full day working in the village on Thursday before we leave for Sarajevo on Friday. By then we will no doubt be exhausted - but I am confident that we will have made a modest but significant contribution to the lives of the villagers we have come into contact with as well as contributing to our own understanding of post-conflict situations.
William Hague adds:
"This has been an extremely moving and positive project. 14 years have passed since the horrific violence which took the lives of 8,000 men and boys in Srebrenica, but the work of rebuilding homes, lives and a way of life in Srebrenica is still not complete. I'm proud of the small contribution that the Conservative Party has been able to make towards that goal through Project Maja.
"Bosnia-Herzegovina as a country is still tilting uncertainly between its past and its future and could slip backwards without sustained international attention. Now more than ever it is vital that the international community does not forget Bosnia or turn away from it before it is firmly on the track to lasting stability and membership of the European Union.
"Entrenching stability in Bosnia and setting it irreversibly on the path to EU membership is a major test of what the EU can accomplish in foreign affairs; a test it cannot afford to fail."
