News

Just in the beginning of the summer holidays and the splashes of the sea waves Center ‘Amalipe’ organized a general training with more than 100 school principals, which took place from 2nd to 6th July. Participants were headmasters of the schools which we chose to take part during the second year of the project ‘Decreasing the dropout rate of Roma children from school’. The project is released at a national level and is financed by Foundation ‘America for Bulgaria’. Its purpose is to reduce drastically the number of dropout students, the unmotivated school absences, as well as to increase the academic success of the students. The project is built upon the methodology for effective work with students, parents and teachers via the implementation of elective subject ‘Folklore of the ethnoi – Roma folklore’, establishing Student parliaments, Parent clubs, mutual activities of the institutions, parents and the children for motivation of the students for active participation in the school life and continuing the education at a high school level. The model, which we implement in the second year of the project will be the one we tested in the first year – co-work of mentoring and pilot schools, within which the mentoring one is the leading school, which will help the pilot schools to keep the students in the classrooms.

Since September 2011 the project will be implemented for second year and the number of schools, included in it, will increase from 35 to 100 schools from 20 districts in the whole country. In relation to the expansion of the project we gathered over 100 school headmasters who wished to take part in our initiative. In the period of 6 days the team of Center ‘Amalipe’ introduced the essence, purposes of the program, as well as the main activities which it envisions. The schools from the different areas had the opportunity to highlight their problems and - in relation to the aims of the project - to recommend individually the methods and the activities which will keep and motivate effectively their students. The ideas, which were born in each of the schools during our meeting, will be included in the individual School program for prevention of the dropout rate, which will be prepared by each of the schools. Center ‘Amalipe’ will support the implementation of the school programs via small mutual projects of mentoring and pilot schools and in the meantime it will give methodical support for its release via the provision of a team of experts in the sphere of the educative integration.

All our meetings are targeted to provoke the pedagogical teams to realize the problem on their own and to give their solutions for its solving. This is why we believe that each child is an outstanding student, but it needs to be made to believe in this. Our participants shared: ‘A wonderful initiative, lovely people, noble intentions! Thank you for everything that we saw and experienced! The more people learn about you and your ideas, the better the world will be for all children!’, Theodora Bozhinova, Primary school ‘Hr. Botev’, Razliv village; Ivanka Ivanova, Primary school ‘Hr. Botev’, Dzhurovo village.