News

In the days between 10 and 12 March in Lyaskovetz, Center Amalipe organized three-day workshop with mentoring teachers participating in the project "Prevention of Roma children drop out of school”. The project is a three-year program, funded by the Foundation “America for Bulgaria" and it intends to cover to end of the third year over 200 schools throughout the country. 
At the beginning of the meeting Deyan Kolev presented the overall development of the project so far. He emphasizes that in the first period fewer children dropped (48 out of 10 000), but cases of dropouts are concentrated in 4 schools, where there is a need of specific intervention. During the subsequent focus groups "With attention for every child",we looked at individual cases of endangered children, teachers, who have prevented cases of children drop out, shared their methods, we discussed the difficulties encountered in their work to date. New ideas for keeping children in school were exchanged. Every mentoring teacher presented his joint work with the pilot school or schools, as he or she  emphasized on the work on the detention of children at school. 
Subsequent sessions were to address specific cases of dropped / endangered children in the pilot and basic schools, and about methods,basic teachers have used to solve problems and results of joint work between the mentoring and pilot schools. We discussed with every mentoring teacher how to respond to students at risk at the time (information about them we gathered during the meeting with school directors, which we organized 10 days earlier).It is the individual approach and the idea that school should be a place for every child are leading in this project. 
We discussed and methodological guidelines, which Center “Amalipe” has developed accordingly the specific situation in each of the 35 schools. They were presented by our expert prof.Mariya Baeva which said that individual approach to every case of threatened / dropped-out and attention turned to each child is the best and successful method for keeping children in school. Even at the previous meeting with the directors of schools took shape several key activities, necessary for the successful keeping of Roma children in schools that were discussed with the basic teachers: creating of a school parliament, parents club / trustees, school for parents, introducing the practice of the students - mentors. 
It turned out that after the meeting with the directors, some schools have already begun to implement these things. "On 8 March we managed to attract 40% of the parents in the pilot school. The children greeted their mothers with poems and gave them souvenirs made by them in school. We used a case and presented the topic of early marriages, hoping to have influenced at least one family. Some condemn these actions, but there are those who keep the tradition. But our biggest success was the formation of the parents club entirely at the request of parents. We tried to be maximum specific about their commitments and responsibilities and we hope for significant success in our future joint activities. “Thank you for the valuable advices we receive in these workshops” – this is what the mentoring teacher shared in the pilot school "Vasil Levski" in village Vidrare. 
The work on the organization of parental lectures begins, where it will be discussed pressing issues and problems in their children's school and social involvement of young people and students who have shown good results in school as students - mentors. This model is called "Peer helping peers”, their activity will an implementing of a joint work plan with the threatened student and solving of problems related to school dropout tapeworm peers. 
All approaches and methods developed in the last original "workshops for ideas” begin to successfully apply and become a practice of holding the children. For us it is crucial the fact that my colleagues felt themselves as a team. We have already proven in practice that really "Together we can" - was the last sentence of Deyan Kolev!