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Importance of Activities with Roma Parents in Slovakia

Striving to provide children in Slovak marginalized Roma communities with an optimal environment for their development, upbringing, and education, REYN Slovakia supports parents to improve and streamline their parenting skills, their parental competencies, and stimulates child’s development from birth.

To support parental competencies of Roma parents from Slovak marginalized Roma communities better, very specific programs are run by the Slovak government, but also by several NGOs, some of which are members of REYN Slovakia.

Members of REYN Slovakia have very specific expertise and run various programs. They communicate together regularly, exchange their experiences and good practices, give advice to one another, coordinate their activities, join forces to actively influence early childhood and parental policies and improve quality of lives of Roma children and their families.  

TOY for Inclusion and its magic

Wide Open School n.o. – Škola Dokorán,the founding member of the network REYN Slovakiaruns a project TOY for Inclusion.

“This project involves “hard-to-reach” young children from migrant and ethnic minority backgrounds in high-quality inclusive non-formal community education and early childhood care initiatives, facilitates their smooth transition to primary education and improves their learning experience in the long term,“ says Miroslav Sklenka, the director of Wide Open School n.o. – Škola dokorán.

TOY for Inclusion project is well known in several communities in the eastern part of Slovakia thanks to Play Hubs, where the “magic” happens – when children and their parents enter the realm of toys, and books, and play, some of them for the first time in their life. One of the communities for a Play Hub is located in the local elementary school in Spišský Hrhov.

“Families who come to Play Hubs, informal centers run by local action teams, not only spend time with their children, but also meet new families from different backgrounds. The new relationships and ties they will establish in toy libraries are expanding into other spheres as well,” shares director of the school, Mr. Peter Strážik

AFLATOUN encourages holistic development

Another programme – AFLATOUN/AFLATOT – is run by the Open Society Foundation Bratislava and focuses on social and financial education. The program is implemented mainly in marginalized Roma communities. During the program, families learn basic strategies to support their children in their implementation of independent decisions, in perceiving their emotions, discovering nature and its resources, and learning how to save and spend responsibly, and how to share.

“Working with families is a very important since it promotes their involvement in the education and development of children in a more systematic and conscious way. The involvement of parents, especially in early childhood, encourages the holistic development of the child,” says the program manager Erika Szabóová.

Kindergarten Spišská Nová Ves started to implement the programme in 2015.

“The reactions we get from parents are very positive. They cooperate with us eagerly – not only by working on all homework connected with social and financial education with their children, but also by taking part in various community activities we organize,” says the kindergarten director Jana Zajacová.

AMALKY and NP PRIM

Organization OZ Detstvo deťom implements programme AMALKY. The core of the programme are mentors – peer activists who engage in early intervention in the Roma community, directly in families at risk of generational poverty. In the natural home environment, in the presence of mothers, they take care of children from the youngest to preschool age.

“Our activities are prepared in a way which respects the age of children and fosters their development. We bring various developing toys and activities to the families: puzzles, cubes, Montessori activities, children’s books, pencils, crayons, papers, worksheets, and coloring books,” says NGO director Eleonóra Liptáková.

Although not a REYN Slovakia member, a lot of activities in the same field REYN members work in are done by the Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Government of the Slovak Republic for Roma Communities. NP PRIM I and NP PRIM II are projects run on a national level. NP PRIM I focused primarily on families and children from marginalized Roma communities, who were not enrolled in kindergarten and did not attend any form of preschool, but did not exclude other parents and children. NP PRIM II strengthens cooperation with families by creating a new non-pedagogical position in the kindergarten – parental assistant. This assistant helps children and their families with the adaptation and socialization process in kindergartens. The parental assistant works directly with the families of the children in their natural, home environment, which proved successful in NP PRIM I.

These and other programmes and projects focused on the importance of activities with Roma parents in Slovakia to help parents create a better, healthier, successful present and future for their children and thus for the whole Roma community.

Read more about REYN Slovakia and follow their Facebook page. 

Erika Szabóová, REYN Slovakia: “Our voice is stronger together”

The Atlas of Roma Communities from 2013 gives a qualified estimate of about 403 000 Roma living in Slovakia, which represents around 7,4% of the total population. Statistical estimates and sociological mappings vary. Some claim there are about 500 000 Roma living in Slovakia. Established in 2014 by Wide Open School, REYN Slovakia advocates for quality early childhood education and care services to be provided for Roma children and improves the professional development opportunities for early childhood practitioners working with Roma children. Today we interviewed REYN Slovakia coordinator Erika Szabóová and learned more about the organization’s initiatives and goals.

– Erika, what are the priorities of your national REYN? What are the short-time and long-time goals?

– Both the short-term and long-term priorities of REYN Slovakia are the same. We aim to offer appropriate professional development opportunities to early childhood practitioners working with Roma children and their families, and actively continue advocating for quality early childhood education and care services for every child.

– What is the current situation with young Roma children in your country, taking into consideration the COVID-19 situation?

– According to our information, the current situation is pretty stable. The summer has helped to calm people down a little. The vaccination campaign targeted specifically at Roma communities is still underway. No communities are being quarantined right now. We will see if and how the situation will change with the new school year: how many children will enroll in kindergartens, what issues will arise in different children groups (for instance, development delays, lack of interest of parents reported by school staff), whether schools will be able to function in person, whether there will be any developments or problems with compulsory preschool education, etc.

– What is the recent intervention that your national REYN carried out?

– We have organized professional development activities – trainings, workshops, study visits – for 120 REYN members during the last months. We find that the newly established cooperation with the Czech network of Early childhood practitioners is very crucial, as our problems and challenges are very similar.

– What is your message to the policy-makers of your country – what would you ask them or tell them if you had 1 minute to talk to them?

– I believe we learn the most when we see things, when we can listen to different people and when we work with our own hands and hearts. I would organize a short-term internship of one week in a kindergarten, school, or community center for them. No high-level meetings, just living the plain life of these vulnerable communities. Then my questions would most probably be: do all position papers and action plans match the reality? What can we all do, as humans, not only as politicians, to help in the best way we possibly can? What needs to be done on a societal level, on community levels, to help these people – children and adults?

– How does your national REYN engage with the members (individual and organizational)? How many members do you have?

– We have more than 500 individual members and around 12 organizational members. The main channel we use for our communication is our Facebook page, where we post regular updates about our activities or news related to our scope of work. For targeted communication with our members, we also send out newsletters. This channel is useful, especially when we try to communicate longer texts, but also when we need to reach an audience not active on any social network. To engage with our members, we also use the channels and relevant activities of our hosting organization Škola Dokorán – Wide Open School and a close cooperating organization Open Society Foundation Bratislava.

– What is the dream of your national REYN for Roma children in your country?

– Our dream is that all children in Slovakia – including Roma children, even from the most marginalized communities – have a possibility to succeed in their lives and to reach their full potential. We also dream that Roma parents become positive role models and agents of change not only for their children, but also for their communities.

– Why should one join REYN, you think?

– The shortest answer would probably be: our voice is stronger together. This, we believe, is true at all times. Besides, the more members we have, the more knowledge and expertise we are able to collect, harness, and use for the wellbeing of Roma children.

Read more about REYN Slovakia and follow their Facebook page. 

Blog: Impact of COVID-19 on Slovak children from marginalized Roma communities

There is absolutely no doubt the COVID pandemic has been incredibly hard on all of us. As usual, difficult times hit the most vulnerable the hardest…

Over the past 12 months, marginalized people in Slovakia have become even more marginalized due to the pandemic and all phenomena related to it. The outcomes of the pandemic are quite cruel. Many previous achievements and successful work in these communities in the field of early childhood care and education, education of children and young people or parents, health care, and other important fields and areas have come undone. The pandemic pointed to/out the differences and disadvantages that different groups of people in Slovakia face in general and in education in particular.

Almost every day since March 2020, I have watched news, articles, and reports about the impact of the COVID-19 on people’s lives. I heard about children lacking proper education and access to education, struggling with online education, or suffering from the huge workload and lack of social interactions during the pandemic. However, at first, the news mainly focused on the majority population. I assumed the situation would be much worse in Roma communities. Thousands of Roma children from marginalized communities have had very scarce or no access at all to education and care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, with the situation being more stable, children have returned to schools. Majority of pupils went through an „adaptation period“ when attention was put on re-creating school and class community, and relationships. Teachers and other school professionals are only now assessing the impact that previous months have had on children, their education and wellbeing. However, there have already been news about lots of children (many from Roma communities) failing their classes.

Many Roma children could not participate in online education since they do not own a computer or/and have no access to the internet. Lack of IT skills necessary for this type of education (and no family member that could help them) and with no space in their homes where they could study made the access and active participation even harder. Community centers were closed, NGO programs focused mostly on delivering material help for communities. Educational and afterschool activities targeting regular work with parents and other important adults in children’s lives stopped completely.

According to the data from the Educational Policy Institute of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic, 52 000 children did not take part in distance learning during the pandemic. This means 7,5% of all pupils did not utilize any available way of learning. 128 000 children did not have access to online education. This means 18,5% of all pupils were learning by using worksheets, via phone calls with teachers, or TV broadcast in the first wave of the pandemic.

The situation was slightly better in pre-school education. Kindergartens were open almost the whole school year. Still, many parents from Roma communities claimed they were scared to bring their children to the facilities where they could contract the disease from other children or teachers. This situation was probably the most difficult in case the child was older – right before entering primary school. Due to the fact that pre-school education for children aged 5 and older was not compulsory yet, directors of kindergartens were in a very difficult situation when trying to persuade parents to cooperate.

Both state and NGO programs focused on working with families (e.g., home visits) had to stop due to the pandemic and introduced measures. Now the situation is improving, and programs are finally reopening after being in limbo for several months.

Those times, when longer in-person meetings with people from marginalized communities were not possible, and many communities were “sealed in quarantine,” probably also had other implications. To name just a few of them, we have noticed: decreased interest in education, school, cooperation with teachers and other professionals; reduced levels of cooperation with majority population and decreased level of mutual trust; decreased motivation to work towards goals such as finishing school, finding a job, sustaining a job etc.

A couple of years ago, UNICEF started using a claim: “For every child, education. For every child, love.” All child rights must indeed be granted for all children without any exception and under all circumstances in order for children to develop their full and unique potential. These rights are granted by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and this document basically says that we cannot leave any child behind. In fact, we have left many of them behind. Children from the poorest and most marginalized Roma communities in Slovakia will need years to get back on track with their lives and education after all that has been or – better said – has not been done during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now that the restrictions have been somewhat lifted, REYN Slovakia is going to focus on in-person meetings with cooperating organisations and individuals to boost activities in marginalized Roma communities, build mutual trust, provide guidance and support necessary to get ready for possible new lockdowns and restictions. Our overall goal right now is to work as hard as possible to build resilient communities capable of using the resources around them.

Author: Erika Szabóová, REYN Slovakia coordinator, program manager, Open Society Foundation Bratislava

Read more about REYN Slovakia and follow their Facebook page.