This personal experience of mine is the motto of the women’s vision. We, the adults, want to plan and direct human development. By using an active, creative approach to life and problems imposed by it, we create visions of the possible. But there is a selective empowerment of certain visions that we draw actual steps for, pushing them forward into realization by our actual efforts.
The experience and tolerance in creation women’s vision are closely connected to my 86 year old mother Rsoka Murdzeva. In the very beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, she did her best to enable me, as a child, to incorporate into myself the vigor of the women unities in the Antifascist Front of Women (AFW), endeavoring to realize their vision of a more just society. She is a live eyewitness of the paradox of the Balkans and wisdom of survival. Since 1911 when my mother was born, without moving away, she lives on the same ground, but in the seventh state ever since. She managed to survive three empires and six regimes. She remembers many foreign solders coming and crossing Macedonia, pretending to be the ultimate liberators of the people. During all those upheavals, women have singled out life, peace and tolerance as most important to survival of the family and humanity.
Here, I share my joy with the women associated in the Union of Women’s Organizations of the Republic of Macedonia (UWOM), that the women’s vision has been incarnated in this text. It’s a vision in which we, daily in the course of ten years (1994-2004), were interweaving our hopes, needs and imagination. Women’s vision is one of development of a culture of peace and requires respect of life, establishment of social justice, respecting human rights and intercultural values.
Support and great stimulus for creating this women’s vision…

The authoress
Olga Murdzeva Skarik