A campaign for Roma education started

The key is in your hands

 

On 6 February in Skopje, the National Roma Centre from Kumanovo held a session with the reporters, thus beginning the campaign for Roma education called “The Key is in your hands”.

It was stated that the Roma people face a number of prejudices when reporting on their everyday life, that they are often a synonym of poverty, social cases, abuse, crime, etc, and that the public is not informed enough about the positive examples among them, such as Roma PhDs, university professors or successful women. The participants dedicated the discussion to the ways of informing about the Romas and the dilemma on which is better: to write about the good or the bad examples in this ethnic community.

The Director of the Sector for Communities Educational Development at the Ministry of Education and Science, Dragan Nedeljkovik, said that there are about 940 high school students in Macedonia today who receive scholarship and achieve great results, which is a proof of their intelligence on one hand and an alert for the need to improve the socio-economic conditions in the country. He also announced the plan for opening a department for Roma language at the Faculty of Philology in Skopje and a group at the Faculty of Pedagogy.

Most of the participants at the session agreed that the situation with the way of informing on the Roma problems is to improve by employing Roma reporters who will write about the problems in their communities. Twelve young Roma are being educated as part of the programme for Roma reporters’ education at the Macedonian Institute for Media.

Mabera Kanberi from the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy informs that Macedonia received 1.4 million Euros grant for the Roma Decade campaign and that there about 150 Roma students in the country.

“During the campaign, which will have terminated by June this year, we are planning to visit all Roma families in Kumanovo, Skopje and Prilep and introduce them to the possibilities offered within the Roma Decade at the primary, secondary and higher education.”, announced Slavica Kurcinovska from the National Roma Centre. A documentary on Roma education will be promoted as part of the campaign “The key is your hands” and another session will take place, this time with government representatives and representatives from the local government. .

The campaign is supported by the President of the Republic of Macedonia, the Ministry of Education through the Sector for Development of Education in the languages of the minorities, the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, the Macedonian Information Agency, the mayors of Skopje, Suto Orizari, Kumanovo, Prilep, Gazi Baba, Gorce Petrov, Cair, the Radio-diffusion council, the Macedonian Chamber of Lawyers and the Macedonian Institute for Media. It is financially supported by the Roma Educational Fund from Budapest with the total amount of 20,000 Euros.

 

G.Sh.