News

On January 26-28 in the snowy town of Vratsa was held the second international meeting of the Steering Committee of “To touch the untouchables: struggling with traditional and new anti-Roma stereotypes” project funded by the European Commission under “Fundamental rights and citizenship” program. The project is implemented by Center Amalipe. The project aims to combat the anti-Roma attitudes based on traditional and new stereotypes among employees of state administration, teachers, educators, social and health workers and among the Roma community itself. The mechanism for achieving the main objectives is the Joint Task Force (JTF)

The meeting was attended by the JTF’s from the six pilot districts of the project; the community moderators from the centers for community development; representatives of the Ministry of Health, Agency for Social Assistance, Regional educational inspectorates and others. There were also representatives of the Dutch partner organization “Justice and Peace”.

Within these 3-day each of the mobile groups presented the achieved results and the faced problems. Individual teams presented their work on training of field-workers – Regional Educational Inspectorate, Regional Health Inspection, and Regional Directorate for Social Assistance as well as dealing with specific cases. Of particular interest was the sharing of experience on specific cases. All the teams had achieved a very good cooperation with the Roma community moderators.  The shared experiences have demonstrated that the project has already achieved its main objectives – the creation of an active working partnership for dealing with cases on local/regional level and especially on those cases related to the Roma community and other vulnerable groups. Evidence for this are many specific cases resolved: dealing with case of family violence followed by a school dropout: through the collaboration of social and educational authorities; prevention of child’s abandonment by a prostitute teenage mother – meantime she is back to school and many others.   

Especially interesting for the participants was the presentation of “Justitia et Pax” (“Justice and Peace”) about the situation of the so called “stateless” people in the Netherlands. The film of the Dutch Roma organization “Triana” about the situation of the stateless Roma in the Netherlands was met with a high interest from the audience and it was a reason for a long discussion. The foreign partners presented the Dutch good practices for work with Roma community, and all the legislation related with that as well.   

During the meeting the results of the social survey conducted randomly between employees of the social, educational and health care in six areas in terms of stereotypes and attitudes towards Roma were presented. The results demonstrate traditional stereotypes against Roma community. The project team hopes with their work to achieve different results in the study which will be held in the end of the project. The start of several campaigns within the project will be also launched.

All the community moderators from the six Roma community development centers established by Center Amalipe in Etropole, Byala Slatina, Peshtera, Pavlikeni, Kameno and Novi Pazar also participated in the training. During the 3-day meeting the community moderators shared their experience on how to work with Roma community and gave various examples of collaboration with the mobile groups in order to deal with different specific cases. The activity of the community development centers is based on a field-work at local level through mobilizing of the resources of the community itself. The community moderators from the six centers talked about specific cases carried out on the ground and set specific tasks for the next months. The need of greater promotion of the centers’ activities was also highlighted. In relation to that the community moderators received a special task: together with the team of the project to work on creating of a brochure of each center with its specific activities and partners. In general all teams reported that they felt like partners with the experts and the work with JTF’s is the best way for dealing with different cases. If there is good partnership there is no more work on piece and that is what has won the Roma community’s trust in the institutions because this is a two-way process:  we need to overcome prejudices and stereotypes of the institutions against Roma community and the opposite. Participants in the meeting considered it is very constructive and fruitful and offered a new one which to be held in May 2012 when are going to be ready the final results on the project.