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We started our journey in Chicago, where we had the chance to see how different ethnic communities struggle to both integrate as well as preserve their identity. Some of them had a lot of similarities with the Roma. We were able to borrow ideas from them all, which we will adapt to improve our work in Bulgaria.

Back to Mother Earth

Our first meeting was with Dr. Alaka Wali from the Field Museum (http://www.fieldmuseum.org/) in Chicago who acquainted us with the experience of the Peruvian organization ARAA/CHOBA-CHOBA. They try to incorporate and connect community values with schooling. Ecology is a key method used in their extracurricular activities with children.
A similar approach was used by the American Indian Center in Chicago (http://aic-chicago.org/), where we met with Adam Kessel and Megan Bang on October 22nd. The American Indian Center (AIC) in Chicago is the oldest urban Native American center in the nation. AIC acts as a primary resource for urban American Indian culture and utilizes a land-based education program to attract children. Our discussion there continued for more than two hours. We found many similarities between Native Americans and the Roma. We were especially interested in their successful promotion of fellowship between Indian people of all Tribes living in metropolitan Chicago. They have also managed to maintain cultural values and to foster educational advancement of Indian people by engaging school groups and introducing a land-based curriculum and garden, which they use to make a connection between the children’s current urban environment and their historical past. We discussed our experience in Bulgaria, and came to the conclusion that both approaches could be combined and that we could both benefit from the lessons we have each learned when working with schools.
The American Indian Center is also a member of the Chicago Cultural Alliance, a consortium including more than 25 ethnic museums and cultural centers that host Cultural Connections events. Cultural Connections is a public education program designed to explore and explain cultural diversity through a series of comparative cultural events. This gave us ideas on how we could additionally enrich the presentation of our multicultural experience, especially in the schools with a mixed student body.

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Presentation about using mother tongue for achieving high academic results (in BG)

Presentation about the experience of Bulgarian and American schools (in BG)