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Basic education for Roma adults
Start date: Sep 1, 2015, End date: Aug 31, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The project was developed in order to give adult Romas and Roma families a possibility to gain easier access to basic education. As a 2012 study conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights shows, Roma still face discrimination and exclusion. Around 20% of Roma adults consider themselves as illiterate, about 14% of Roma children don't attend school at all. Not having access to education has a lot of negative aspects – increased risk of poverty, high number of unemployment and so on. Therefore it seems necessary to us to focus on the topic of basic education - meaning not only skills like reading, writing and digital skills, but also including topics like education, health and so on. The six participating organisations from Austria, Bosnia, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Serbia are all working with Roma people in different projects and have come together to focus on education. The participating organisations all have noticed in their work with Roma that education is a basis for them to get employment, but also to give them perspectives for the future. The project is developed as an European project since in our opinion the topic does concern many countries and therefore solutions should be looked after on an European level. In six transnational meetings, experts (including people from Roma minority themselves) will be invited, data will be collected and discussed and best practice projects will be analysed. It is important to us to not only discuss the topic with experts from the pedagogic field or social work, but also give the target group, Roma people, a chance to voice their opinion as well. At the end of the project, two manuals will be prepared. Those manuals focus on adult Roma on the one hand, but also on families on the other hand. They will consider special target groups, for example travelling Roma or Roma living and working outside their home countries. They will include the knowledge of experts, the feedback of Roma and the analysis of best practice models in Europe. One manual will mainly focus on adults, the other one will focus on learning in families since family is a very important place for Roma people and is also rarely considered as a learning space in basic education. The manuals will take into account the specific living and social situation of Roma people and will also be developed for use in different countries, according to the resources each country has. A second goal is to show the value of education to the Roma community. Although the numbers of children visiting primary school are increasing, only about 10% of Roma aged 16-24 have been in touch with secondary education. Probably due to the high poverty rate and the difficult living situation education is not foremost on their minds and that’s something we need to address during this project as well. Also, it is important for us to make the public aware of the situation of this ethnic minority and increase the awareness about discrimination factors. To achieve this, dissemination of the project process and results is crucial as well as the inclusion of the public in the discussion via multiplier events. Furthermore, students in pedagogic and social studies will take an active part in the project. Methods used will be interviews with experts and Roma people, research on the internet, public discussion of the results and the development of the manuals. The results the project aims at are wide spread - from raising awareness (especially in the areas of politics, pedagogic and social studies) to highten the self-consciousness of Roma by inclusion to develop concepts that can be used and implemented easily. The long term results the partners hope to achieve are better chances for Roma in the future due to an easier access to education and due to a higher awareness in the Roma community itself about the importance of education.

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