Recent activities of ERGO member Slovo 21
Slovo 21 has been very active in the last weeks, focusing their efforts on their contributions to ERGO Network’s Annual Work Programme Roma Included in Social Europe (RIISE).
National Roma Integration Strategy:
Since May 2020 NGO Slovo 21 has been organizing meetings with the network of Roma NGOs in the Czech Republic to discuss the Strategy of Roma Integration 2021 – 2030. Roma representatives met with the coordinators of the Strategy (SRI) at the Office of the Government to express disagreement with the SRI prepared by the government. On June 19th, Roma representatives together with the relevant government resorts met with EU Commission desk officers to discuss the SRI. So far, Roma NGOs cooperate closely and prepare suggestions for new goals of the SRI in order to reach the best results and to include Roma indicators in new SRI.
Community-Led Local Development
On May 21st Slovo 21 met with the representatives from the newly built Roma Centre in Náchod to discuss further cooperation between local authorities, Local Action Group (LAG) and the Roma community in Náchod city. We were informed about the achievements and planned activities. After the meeting with the Roma representatives, we met with the representatives of LAG Stolové Hory to discuss future cooperation with the Roma community from Náchod city, the membership of NGO Slovo 21 in LAG Stolové Hory and our contribution to CLLD.
On 29 June, we met with Roma activists to prepare our next steps. We targeted issues and discussed about a survey to find out the needs of the Roma community in Náchod city. We then met with the mayor of Náchod to discuss our cooperation and offer our activities to the city, including the organization of a festival of Roma culture in Náchod. The meeting was successful: The mayor is positive about the planned activities and is supporting the festival.
On 15 June, we also met with representatives of the LAG Opavsko to learn about opportunities, discuss issues of the Roma community and plan a meeting with the mayor of the city – Budišov and Budišovkou.
CLLD Capacity-Building
On 29/30 May, Seven Roma women – the local coordinators from five different Czech localities – participated in a two-day capacity building meeting in Prague. During the meeting participants received information about the CLLD process, small grants and future activities. An important part of the capacity building meeting was to share experiences, challenges and successes with the cooperation with local authorities and plan the next steps of their work.
From 26-28 June, more than 15 Roma women participated in the next capacity building meeting together with their local coordinators. During the meeting, the Roma women from 5 localities improved their competences to work in the CLLD process. Our goal was to inform them about the CLLD process and the activities they could organize in their localities. The meeting was organized together with the coordinator of Roma women group Manushe.