Centre for Applied Non Violent Actions and Strategies

The Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) is a non-profit, non-governmental, educational institution focused on the use of nonviolent conflict. It was founded in 2004 by Srđa Popović and the CEO of Orion Telecom, Slobodan Đinović. Both were former members of the Serbian youth resistance movement, Otpor!, which supported the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević in October 2000. Drawing upon the Serbian experience, CANVAS seeks to educate pro-democracy activists around the world in what it regards as the universal principles for success in nonviolent struggle.

Established in Belgrade, CANVAS has worked with pro-democracy activists from more than 50 countries, including Iran, Zimbabwe, Burma, Venezuela, Ukraine, Georgia, Palestine, Western Sahara, West Papua, Eritrea, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Tonga and, recently, Tunisia and Egypt.

CANVAS’ training and methodology has been successfully applied by groups in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), Lebanon (2005), The Maldives (2008)?, Egypt (2011)?, Syria (2011)? and Ukraine(2014). It works only in response to requests for assistance.

The core of CANVAS’s work is rather to spread the word of “people power” to the world than to achieve victories against one dictator or another. CANVAS' big mission is to explain to the world what a powerful tool nonviolent struggle is when it comes to achieving freedom, democracy and human rights.

CANVAS was established in Belgrade in 2004. Its founding members, Slobodan Đinović and Srđa Popović, were leaders of the Serbian youth resistance movement Otpor! (Serbian for Resistance!), which played an instrumental role in deposing Slobodan Milošević in 2000. CANVAS sees itself as the successor to a host of non-violent campaigners from India's Mohandas Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. CANVAS has become known for its work with nonviolent democratic movements worldwide through the transfer of knowledge on strategies and tactics of nonviolent struggle.

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