dear reyn friends, dear colleagues,

first of all, i wish you all a happy new year :)) and a lot of energy in 2013.

i have been meaning to write already for some months (actually directly after our reyn conference in opatija 2012) but due to some technical website problems and later the holidays period, i only now have found some time to exchange some thoughts with you.

first of all, i am curious about how you try to promote reyn network in your professional networks and what we can do further for the reyn promotion etc.

during our workshops in opatija it was nice to see the creativity developed by the individual groups – now i am wondering what we all think should happen in the future with our reyn network:

*should we have another reyn conference in spring/summer 2013?

* should reyn serve for exchange of project experiences through study visits/exchange training materials/write common projects?

* should we gain knowledge through additional trainings/workshops? should we be able to act as trainers in each other’s countries so we can both gain and transfer knowledge?

* should we start a common lobby group for preschool education/ecd provision adjustments?

* should we include GO representatives / parents in our reyn network too?

perhaps it is too ambitious at this point, but in my view, we should try to incorporate all these elements in our existing network.

and talking about the community involvement, i would like to check with you if you have some good examples of parental participation in kindergartens and how it works for you?

also, it is important for me to hear how you include additionally marginalized romani children within romani communities (we have a case of extremely deprived families in suto orizari, predominantly romani community, and when trying to include children into the local kindergarten, we encounter resistance from all sides – kindergarten, (romani)parents, children. the question then is – should those children be prepared in “alternative”, preparatory kindergartens/daily centra so they can gain additional language/social skills as to subsequently be included into the kindergartens or is there another, more practical solution? is supporting children with participation fee sufficient or do deprived families need additional assistance, if so, what would it be?

my apologies for such a long post but as there are many issues to discuss, i wanted to use the opportunity to post them all at once :))

please do stay in touch 🙂

hope to see you soon during another reyn 2013! :))