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REYN Draws Attention to Roma Children at the European Parliament 

Within the framework of Roma Week 2023, the International Step by Step Association (ISSA) through its REYN initiative, and together with the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), Eurochild, and the Minority Initiative, held a public event at the European Parliament in Brussels on April 27, 2023. The session, titled “Unlocking the Potential of Young Roma Children in Europe” was hosted by Dr. Milan Brglez, Member of the European Parliament (Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats). 

Moderated by Tomas de Jong, Junior Policy Manager for Health Equity (EPHA), the meeting highlighted the importance of early childhood development to help Roma children in Europe grow and thrive, despite the structural barriers they are repeatedly faced with. It also brought to light the issue of school segregation and the overrepresentation of Roma children in institutional care. The meeting concluded by galvanizing European and national policymakers to take action in the early years. 

Roma children in Europe not given the opportunity to thrive  

The meeting started with a keynote speech by MEP, Dr. Milan Brglez, Vice-Chair of the Intergroup on children’s rights and member of the Committee of Employment and Social Affairs. In his opening statement, he said, “As a father, pedagogue and politician, I can confirm that there is no greater satisfaction than helping children and young people to thrive, recognize and realize their potential in a world full of challenges.” 

The reality in which Roma children live often makes it very difficult, however, for them to develop and thrive. He argued that “unequal opportunities for Roma children to take full advantage of their potential are not only unjust and in violation of their fundamental rights, but also to the detriment of the Roma community and society as a whole as they perpetuate the intergenerational social hardship and exclusion.” 

“To break the vicious circle of inequality that Roma children and their families face, we must first understand and raise awareness about the conundrum of structural determinants and obstacles coupled with antigypsyism and intersectional discrimination that negatively affect the lives of Roma from the earliest years of childhood.” 

New data about the situation of young Roma children in Europe 

Following Dr. Brglez, Aljosa Rudas, Program Manager at ISSA and coordinator of the REYN Initiative, referred to the scientific evidence that states that the first six years of a child’s life are critical in determining their future outcomes, and introduced the recent European REYN Early Childhood Research Study. Conducted in 11 countries, the study brings together unprecedented Roma-related early childhood data, exploring six key areas that impact a child’s holistic development, including discrimination and antigypsyism. The report also contains recommendations for coordinated European and national action to support the inclusion of Roma children. 

Experiences of antigypsyism and poverty 

Next, Reneta Krivozova, Policy and Advocacy Officer on Child Poverty at Eurochild, presented a new project taking place in Bulgaria, which to improve the lives of people living in disadvantaged situations — especially Roma populations as 86% live in poverty. Currently, there is an overrepresentation of Roma children in care. The project gathers evidence on how to prevent family separation and support families before children enter into care.  

Expanding on the issue of the institutionalization of Roma children, Tanja Vasić, of the Minority Initiative, Austria, highlighted the large scale of the problem in Europe and that alternative care is hardly available for Roma children due to systemic racism and antigypsyism. Ms Vasić provided some suggestions on how to provide support to Roma National Strategies to ensure that alternative care is provided for Roma children. She stated that, “If we want to change something for those children, we have to change relations: we have to change how people treat Roma families.” 

Call to action/ongoing initiatives 

Agata D’Addato, Head of Program at Eurochild presented the First Years, First Priority campaign which works to bring early childhood development onto the EU policy and funding agenda. The campaign focuses especially on children from birth to three years of age and on those children who are facing the biggest disadvantage — such as Roma, migrants and refugees, children living in poverty or in institutions, and children with special needs or disabilities. 

Francesca Colombo is a Program Manager at ISSA and works on the First Years First Priority campaign. She highlighted that for the campaign to be successful — ensuring that all young children aged 0 to 6 have equal opportunities for safe, healthy and optimal development — it is crucial to have evidence and data about the situation of the most vulnerable young children and their families, including Roma children, in order to be able to combat the discrimination and exclusion they face and be able to support them effectively. 

“There is no quality in ECEC services if there is no inclusion” 

Geraldine Libreau, Policy Officer for Early Childhood Education and Care at the European Commission, opened her speech with these words. She outlined potential avenues for action from the European Commission to break the circle of discrimination. She also highlighted the important efforts of the European Working Group on Early Childhood Care and Education in having inclusion as a key pillar of an integrated and holistic approach for the early years. 

Voices from the field 

Participants also had the opportunity to share their insights, including encouraging and successful practices. Zsuzsa Laszlo, National Coordinator of REYN Hungary shared the importance of working with Roma ECD professionals. She noted that, “Quality education in early childhood is only possible if we pay attention to the professionals who work with Roma and refugee children.” 

Roma children must have equal access to opportunities 

The meeting was closed by Mr Dragos Pîslaru MEP, Chair of the European Parliament Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. In his concluding remarks he urged EU Member States to comply with their obligations and take action to meet the needs of Roma people, and Roma children in particular. He argued that “It is crucial to see and feel the types of challenges that Roma children are facing” and emphasized that, “We cannot stop until each and every child in a Roma community has equal opportunities to access the same services as children in other communities.” 

REYN Croatia Awarded Roma Professionals as Role Models

REYN Ambassador awards in Croatia aim to improve the access, quality of inclusiveness of educational services for your Roma children. It does so by recognizing the exceptional and successful examples of quality and inclusive practices provided by Roma professionals in positions that are important for young Roma children to learn and fully develop.

REYN role models are recognized Roma who use their professional and personal reputation in their work to significantly improve conditions for Roma children and/or by their example and achievements encourage greater inclusion of Roma among experts and professionals.

The Ambassador awards are given within the project Inclusion and Equality for Roma Children and their Families run by REYN Croatia.

Watch videos of this year Croatian REYN role models in Croatian language:

Benjamin Ignac

Marijana Sabo

Sanela Balog

Natalija Sklepić

Primary School Tomaš Goričanec  

Primary School Orehovica

ISSA Co-organizes Roma Week 2023 through REYN

This year ISSA, through its REYN initiative, became one of the co-organizers of Roma Week 2023 that will take place on 24-27 April in Brussels, Belgium. Policymakers, experts, activists and organisations concerned with persistent antigypsyism in Europe will be collaborating for Roma Week in the European Parliament and other EU institutions. The Roma Week 2023 is aligned with the objectives of the European Year of skills 2023.

In the framework of the Roma Week 2023, there will be a series of events focusing on how history affects the current situation of Roma in Europe and what are the prospects for the future. The Roma Week 2023 is hosted by the European Parliament and European Commission and organized in partnership with Roma and pro-Roma civil society.

ISSA, through REYN initiative, will be co-organizing the event “Unlocking the Potential of Young Roma Children in Europe” on 27 April, together with European Public Health Alliance, Minority Initiative and Eurochild and hosted by dr. Milan Brglez, Member of European Parliament (Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats). The discussion will be about that each and every child deserves a fair start and equal opportunities in life. However, across Europe Romani children disproportionately face hardship during the early years and beyond. The first six years of a child’s life are critical in determining the rest of their lives. Early Childhood Development is therefore crucial in ensuring that Romani children have all the opportunities to unlock their full and unique potential and grow up in good health and wellbeing – to grow and thrive. However, there are barriers which make realising this difficult. The size of the problem is difficult to determine because of a lack of (disaggregated) data. Adverse conditions for Romani children and their parents are also persistent, as antigypsyism and poor social determinants lead to hardship in all facets of life; employment, education, health, housing to name a few. A result is that Romani children are disproportionately placed in separate schools, sent to ‘special needs education’, or simply removed from their parents and placed in institutional care. Poverty and discrimination run through these issues like a red threat, a structural issue.

During this event, these issues will be illustrated by outlining the scale of the problem, by providing examples of how these issues might manifest in daily life for Romani children, and most importantly how this issue can be resolved through policy action. More information about the event you can find here.

REYN Award in Hungary Recognized Roma in Early Childhood Field

SIx Early Childhood professionals working with Roma and marginalized children in Hungary were recognized during REYN Award 2022 that took place at the end of the last year. Being the initiative of REYN Hungary, this is already the second time the Award is allocated. The first time happened two years before and had a great success.

The number of Roma early childhood professionals is very low in Hungary. Research shows that the communication between early childhood institutions and Roma families can be helped a lot by Roma early childhood professionals. REYN Hungary aims to raise this number, and at the same time to spotlight their work, and raise their appreciation by the non-Roma communities, and by Roma children.

“With the second launch of the REYN Hungary Award in five categories, we are continuing our advocacy in supporting the professionalization of Roma in EC institutions and advocating for programmatic and structural solutions for building the Roma ECD workforce. With REYN Awardees we are promoting Roma EC in the field, and attract and support Roma in the EC career. With the huge media campaign we become visible and advocate for Roma in the EC workforce,” says Zsuzsa Laszlo, REYN Hungary coordinator.

Anyone could propose candidates for the Award. For that an online form had to be filled in, presenting the candidate’s work and information about what she/he does with Roma children. In 2022 there were 25 nominees.

Therefore, REYN Kindergarten Teacher of the year is Gina Rézműves, REYN Kindergarten Teacher assistant of the year is Lea Fényes, REYN Teacher of the year is Elemer Puporka, REYN Pedagogical assistant of the year is Elemér Puporka, and REYN Social worker of the year is Károly Búza and Szilvia Pádár.  This year there was an extra category, REYN doula of the year, Viktoria Vadász. All of the awardees received 50,000 Hungarian forints (equivalent of about 125 euros).

This recognition contributes to the social inclusion of Roma specialists, as well as introduces the wider public to those Roma early childhood specialists who do outstanding work among children. REYN Hungary believes that positive Roma role models help the next generation succeed.

Ouderklap – Beyond A Play and Meeting Room for Roma Families with Young Children

“You are welcome, we want you there. As a parent, you can join whenever it suits you”. This is the message that community worker Aslihan Kaplan and parenting support worker Cara Van Dam use to welcome Roma parents when coming to Ouderklap for the first time.

Launched in the fall of 2021, Ouderklap is a ‘play and meeting group’ for Roma families with young children and families with young children without a Roma background in Kallo, a small district of Beveren in Flanders, Belgium.

After one year of work at the helm of this initiative, in this article, Aslihan and Cara share their experiences.

Located in a district with a great diversity of residents, Ouderklap welcomes Roma children aged 0 to 6 years and their mothers and fathers on Friday afternoons. In the community room, twice a month the play mats are brought out and the toys are ready for children, while the room smells of coffee and tea for the parents.

“I finally got to take a shower, not a dot on my head but loose hair. Finally, something else than being busy with the children because I have been doing nothing else than caring for others for 6 years. I also want to go back to work, and have my baby go to childcare, because I always worked before I met my partner.“

The meaning of encounters for parents

The center offers Roma parents a place they can have to themselves, where they can meet other mothers who have similar experiences about raising their children and sharing doubts and experiences with other parents, which has been revealed as a great source of support. It is also a place where they can play together and discover new experiences with their children. Some of the topics parents have shared their experiences on include:

  • How to introduce sleep routines since older children keep each other awake? 
  • My child is being bullied at school. What can I do? 
  • How do you stay calm yourself when children are angry or excited? What helps and what doesn’t? 
  • Partner help and involvement in parenting

Ouderklap also became a safe space for Roma mothers to allow their sub-identities in addition to being mothers. As one mother put it, “I finally got to take a shower, not a dot on my head but loose hair. Finally, something else than being busy with the children because I have been doing nothing else than caring for others for 6 years. I also want to go back to work, and have my baby go to childcare, because I always worked before I met my partner.”

It also became a place for them to unwind and have a medium to share frustrations and make concrete steps when they felt ready. Cara noticed that it is important to be aware if mothers just need to vent or want to find a solution to something. For example, mothers could say things like, “My kids go to sleep really late, they don’t listen when I send them to bed. But it’s also not healthy because you can see they don’t get enough sleep, and then they cannot get out of bed.” So as a facilitator, Cara can guide the conversation using questions like “What have you tried? And how is it now? Is that enough for you? Did you just want to be able to talk about it now or are you willing to do something about it too?” And if they’re ready, she would guide the discussions to come up with solutions together.

Is pancake baking family supportive?

During the implementation of the Ouderklap sessions, Aslihan and Cara noticed the need for the initiative to first grow into a safe place and later, from that trust, to also be a place where questions on all kinds of topics could be discussed. It was always up to the local residents to decide what they felt like doing. One might like to make pancakes together, another to go on an excursion, while some prefer to simply practice their Dutch language skills. This variety of interests then raises the question about the value of ‘Ouderklap’, is this really family supportive?

What is supportive for parents is very diverse, what energises one might not for another. According to Cara and Aslihan, family support is about initiatives that can be supportive at moments where people need to recharge to then take up their parenting role again.

Keeping thresholds low

While hesitation to participate and maintaining an equally safe environment for everyone remains a challenge, Cara and Alishan learned that making the participants co-responsible for the group process is key. This implied flexibility from them as facilitators during their nine-months exploration. They not only organized outdoor activities to increase visibility in the neighborhood, but also experimented with handing out soups at schools and knocking on doors. Having a familiar face, such as Aslihan, whom is the neighborhood community worker, also proved to lower the barrier to participate for both mothers and fathers.

Great ambitions

For Aslihan and Cara, their ambition is to empower Roma mothers. While both fathers and mothers are welcome, they noticed that engagement came mostly from mothers. They are determined to create a safe environment to strengthen these mothers to do or say what she has long desired for both herself and her children. Whether it be setting boundaries, allowing sub-identities to be present, or simply being able to come to the center, Ouderklap has succeeded in building a meaningful place, with and for local residents.


Authors: Cara Van Dam and Liesbeth Lambert
Photos: Courtesy of Ouderklap

Up to 75% enrolment target for young Roma children in ECEC in Slovakia

Specific Steps of the Slovak Roma Inclusion Strategy 2030

The Strategy for Equality, Inclusion, and Participation of Roma 2030 was approved by the Slovak Government on 7 April 2021. This framework material forms the basis for action plans, which will always be drawn up for a three-year period, i.e., 2022-2024, 2025-2027, and 2028-2030. Representatives from REYN Slovakia have been actively involved in the development of the Strategy and Action Plans.

The Strategy is a framework document that defines the direction of public policies in order to achieve a visible change and improvement in the field of equality and inclusion of Roma in Slovakia. It presents a set of starting points and objectives that aim to stop the segregation of Roma communities and to make a significant positive turn in the social inclusion of Roma.

“The areas of employment, education, health, and housing are key to the fulfillment of the Strategy’s objectives, and special emphasis is also placed on stepping up interventions to combat anti-Roma racism,” state the submitters of the material from the Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Government of the Slovak Republic for Roma Communities.

The subsequent Action Plans propose measures in the same five priority areas that were previously stated in the Strategy.

Strategy and Action Plans

Education


The vision of the Strategy in the field of education is to increase the real participation of children from marginalized Roma communities in care and education. The share of the youngest Roma children under three years of age participating in early childhood education and care programs is to reach at least 30%.

“The proportion of Roma children aged 3-6 in pre-primary education is to be increased from the current 25 to 75%, ” the submitters state.

The Strategy also aims to halve the proportion of children from the marginalized Roma communities who repeat a year in primary or special primary schools, as well as halve the proportion of pupils from the marginalized Roma communities who drop out of school. Conversely, the proportion of Roma with completed upper secondary education is to be doubled to 45% for males and 40% for females.

In the education field, the proposed action plan focuses on the need to improve the results of children from marginalized Roma communities. Besides, it aims to improve the quality and number of teachers and assistants in the education of Roma pupils, to increase the capacity of schools and kindergartens in areas with Roma communities, and support measures for children and pupils from Roma communities with insufficient knowledge of Slovak, which is not their mother tongue.

Housing

The Strategy aims to eliminate significant inequalities in housing between members of the marginalized Roma communities and the majority population of Slovakia.

“By 2030, all residents of the marginalized Roma communities, and therefore all citizens and residents of the Slovak Republic without distinction, should have proper access to safe and potable water. Closely related to this challenge is the gradual legalization of technically compliant dwellings and the settlement of land on which illegal dwellings of marginalized Roma communities residents are located,” the material states. 

With regard to segregated settlements, the vision is to reduce the proportion of Roma living in segregated communities, as well as to reduce the total number of segregated settlements.

As stated in the proposal of the action plan, priority tasks in the area of housing are to reduce the number of illegal dwellings, to improve technical infrastructure and amenities in localities of marginalized Roma communities, but also to implement measures aimed at reducing residential segregation of Roma, for example through the promotion of rental housing in municipalities.

Employment

The Strategy aims to reduce the proportion of Roma aged 16 to 24 who are neither employed nor already in education from the current 68 to 40%, as well as to increase the employment rate of Roma aged 20 to 64 from the current 20 to 45%. In particular, the Strategy and its action plans will address the issue of Roma women’s employment, which is significantly lower than that of men.

The proposed action plan defines measures to increase the chances of Roma on the labor market, but also, for example, targeted support for equal access to self-employment and entrepreneurship, including social entrepreneurship, for persons from marginalized Roma communities.

Health

The global objective of the health strategy is to reduce health inequalities between Roma and the general population of the Slovak Republic, with the aim of reducing the gap in life expectancy between the general and Roma population by 50% over the course of a decade.

The tasks related to health in the action plan are designed to improve health conditions at the community level, and also aim to strengthen the professional qualifications of community health promotion workers.

Anti-Roma racism and support of participation

Besides, the Strategy sets targets for eliminating anti-Roma racism, with the ambition to halve the proportion of Roma who have felt discriminated against in the last 12 months. The Strategy will also use supportive anti-discrimination instruments to reduce the proportion of Slovak citizens who would not want a Roma neighbour from the current 54 to 20%. The aim is also to increase by 30% the confidence of Roma in the police.

In the proposed action plan, the section on combating discrimination against Roma and increasing their inclusion in mainstream society calls for anti-Roma racism to be legally recognized as a specific form of racism. One of the other measures proposed is to increase the participation of young Roma and Roma women in policy-making at all levels.

The Strategy and action plans were developed by thematic working groups in each area, with representation from different government departments and institutions, NGOs, the academic sector, and local authorities.

After a long period of participatory preparation of all materials, and a recent personal change on the position of the Plenipotentiary, the drafts of action plans proposing measures in five priority areas for the period 2022-2024 have been submitted by the Office of the Government of the Slovak Republic for the inter-ministerial comment procedure.

More information about the materials and recent developments can be found here.

Photo source: Facebook of Mrs. Andrea Bučková, former Plenipotentiary of the Government of the Slovak Republic for Roma Communities.

Toy Libraries in Kosovo Help Children’s Development

Toy Libraries are a stimulating environment promoting early learning, and child development were established in Kosovo to increase the participation of Roma children in early education.

Toy Libraries were established in two schools in the municipality of Prizren – the second most populous city and municipality of Kosovo. The classrooms that were designated for learning center activities have been adjusted and redesigned to serve as Toy Libraries. In those classrooms, Roma parents can borrow high-quality educational toys and other materials – books, sound books, geometric shapes – for their children to use at home.

“Considering that during the day I am busy with household obligations, I spend up to two hours, 3-4 times a week playing with toys with my children. We also read books from the Toy Librarywith fairy tales and stories. In class, we read fairy tales twice a week, for one hour, according to the schedule planned for the use of the Toy Library,” says Elvan Galushi – a mother of two sons from Prizren. “Toy Library has had a positive impact on my relationship with my children. Through this activity, I have given my children and myself the time to learn and play together. Our family is unable to buy these toys because of the difficult economic conditions, and borrowing helped us a lot. My son has the opportunity to borrow his favorite toy and plays with them every day after school.”

So far, Toy Libraries have 85 members who are Roma parents and 87 Roma children aged 0-8 years. There are 397 toys and 12 books available in total.  KRAEEYN project has donated 149 of the items and also provided hygienic materials.