30.06.2012Third Steering Committee meeting of the project "Promoting participatory field work at grass-root level in marginalised and traditional Roma communities"
The third meeting of the Steering Committee of “Promoting participatory field work at grass-root level in marginalized and traditional Roma communities” project was held in Brussels on June 27. Representatives of the project partners, national institutions responsible for Roma integration and partner NGOs took part in it.
Dimitar Dimitrov presented the main findings from the mid-term evaluation of the Community Development Centers in Bulgaria carried out by Mariana Milosheva, George Bogdanov and him. There is no doubt that the work of the Centers and the Community moderators is extremely successful and even now the project could be evaluated as strong success, stated Dimitrov. The biggest challenge now is how to ensure the sustainability of the Centers. We recommend the team of AMALIPE to concentrate its efforts in this direction.
It is clear that sustainability could not be achieved for 2 years and that is why at least another 2 year project is necessary for these 6 Centers, explained Dimitrov and pointed several possible donors. At the same time intensive advocacy work should be done for institutionalizing the model.
Deyan Kolev explained the idea for defining – at national level – sectored and intersectored interventions for integration. Every of these interventions should have methodology and financial standard. These interventions are tools for implementing the National Roma Integration Strategy at local level. Municipalities, NGOs and other stakeholders should have financing for applying these interventions – most probably ensured by European funds (Human Resources Development OP, Rural Areas Development Program). If this idea receives political support, the Community Development Centers would be defined as intersectored intervention for integration. This would ensure sustainability not only of the existing 6 Centers but would also provide all municipalities with the chance to have such a Center, explained Kolev. The idea was supported by Mr. George Krastev, Deputy chair of the National Council for Cooperation on Ethnic and Integration Issues.
In Romania the Center is functioning in a different way, explained Smaranda Enache from Liga pro Europa. We chose brilliant Roma ladies for community moderators but did not succeed to establish the center in the community. That is why they work with the institutions to imply the topic of field work at grass-root level in their agenda.
The Steering committee members discussed also how to link the project with the implementation of the National Roma Integration Strategies. Since now the NRIS implementation will be linked with preparing Municipal Action Plans the Community Development Centers will mobilize the local Roma communities to take active part in this process. In Bulgaria the Centers will even initiate the process in 6 municipalities, explained Teodora Krumova.
