In January 2023, Rotary Switzerland/Liechtenstein published a deeply human feature about SANCHILD founder Sanela Music, tracing the origins of her commitment to peace, resilience and positive change.
The article, titled A War Experience Transformed into Love, looks back on Sanela’s childhood during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, her arrival in Switzerland as a refugee, and the personal journey that eventually led her to create SANCHILD Foundation.
As a child, Sanela had to leave her home, her school and her friends behind. Together with her mother and three younger sisters, she fled through forests, lived in refugee camps, and later arrived in Switzerland, where her family had to rebuild life from the beginning. Rotary Switzerland/Liechtenstein describes this experience as a turning point that shaped Sanela’s understanding of trauma, trust, resilience and peace.
The article also gives space to the invisible wounds of war. Even after reaching safety, Sanela carried the emotional consequences of conflict for many years. Fear, anxiety, sleepless nights and depression became part of a deeper healing journey: one that eventually helped her understand that war had taken away her trust in human beings.
Over time, this personal process of reconstruction became a source of purpose.
Healing does not erase the past; it transforms pain into responsibility, compassion and action.
Seventeen years after fleeing Bosnia, Sanela returned with the feeling that she had something to contribute. What began with a simple environmental action in the town of Olovo — where young people cleaned their city and rivers — gradually opened a path toward deeper community engagement, youth empowerment and peacebuilding.
The Rotary feature also highlights the early roots of what later became the Harmony Project. In 2017, a first pilot workshop took place in Sarajevo under the name From Inner to Outer Peace. Its message was simple but powerful: peace begins within, and when people reconnect with themselves, they can contribute more positively to their communities.
Through Rotary connections and the support of Walter Gyger, then President of the Swiss Rotary Action Group for Peace, the initiative evolved into a broader Rotary-supported peace project in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The article explains how the name eventually became the Harmony Project: Inspire Positive Change, a training program designed for committed professionals and community actors.
Following the first training, participants implemented 17 local Harmony Ripple Projects in 2021, working in mixed teams across different communities and ethnic backgrounds. The initiative continued to grow in 2022 with a new training week for MFS Emmaüs staff in Srebrenica, where 25 new trainers were trained and 19 new Harmony Ripple Projects were implemented by alumni across Bosnia and Herzegovina.
For SANCHILD, this article represents an important milestone in the public story of our organization. It captures the moment where lived experience, Rotary support, local engagement and a dream of a more harmonious world began to come together.
This work also reflects SANCHILD’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being, SDG 4: Quality Education, and SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals. Through the Harmony Project, personal healing becomes connected to community resilience, peace education, local leadership and long-term collaboration, showing how inner transformation can become a concrete force for social change.
It also reminds us that SANCHILD was born from more than an idea. It was born from memory, resilience, compassion and the conviction that human beings can transform fear into connection.
The article closes on a message that remains central to SANCHILD today: the impact of this work may sometimes feel intangible, but it can be seen in the faces, confidence and renewed life references of the people who take part.
At SANCHILD, we are grateful to Rotary Switzerland/Liechtenstein for sharing this story and for helping bring visibility to the origins of our mission.
What began as one woman’s journey of healing has become a growing movement of inner peace, community action and lasting transformation.