Education – Page 2 – ERGO Network

PECAO peer educators training online and offline

PECAO peer educators training online and offline

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the work we usually do and the way we implement our projects. ERGO Network together with its partners in the framework of the “Peer education to counter antigypsyist hate speech” (PECAO) project adapted to this new situation and moved on with the project implementation.

Peer educators are the most crucial part of PECAO. They receive training to conduct peer education workshops and activities with other young people, as well as monitor and report hate speech online.

Due to the restrictions and health measures in place, ERGO Network and Integro Association combined an online and offline training for the group of 50 peer educators to make the best out of the situation for everyone.

Those who could not travel to Bulgaria had the opportunity to follow an online training course from to 13 August, and those able to travel to Bulgaria had their offline training course in Albena from 10 to 15 August 2020.

Our partner Integro took care of all necessary measures to ensure safety of the participants in the offline training by respecting all protocols when it comes to protection against Covid-19.

During both trainings, the participants could work with and be trained by professionals in the field of addressing hate speech. For example, with Prof. Tomova the participants received information about the impact of stereotypes and prejudices and how media constructs, reinforces and consolidates negative stereotypes and prejudices against Roma. They also worked on content analysis of media products that target Roma.

Throughout the training course, participants had the opportunity to share their experiences and knowledge on the topic, and experts such as lawyers Ms. Mihaylova and Mr. Kashamov introduced the international frameworks that protects against hate speech, as well as shared and made comparison with their national legislation.

The training ended with practical exercises of writing complaints and signal against hate speech, as well as understanding the standards of various social networks for countering hate speech online.

As next step, the peer educators and mentors of the PECAO project will start with their peer education and monitoring activities, which are going to last from October 2020 until September 2021. ERGO Network and its partners will keep you updated on the implementation.

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Romaversitas response to the Covid-19 pandemic

Romaversitas response to the Covid-19 pandemic

On March 13, 2020, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced through Facebook that as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, just a few short weeks before the term-end exams and high school graduation tests, schools and dormitories were to be closed nationwide and education was to be completely transferred to the online space. The measures forced a fair share of our students to move back to their childhood homes, where they were cut off from the infrastructures of their educational institutions and they had to prepare for the approaching exams in overcrowded houses, without personal space, quality IT equipment or broadband internet.

The pandemic made an already bad situation worse for the Roma in Hungary. According to data released by the Roma Education Fund, a significant share of Romani high school students and their families who reside in rural areas or settlements had no access to internet or to IT equipment which data is especially appalling from the perspective that the transfer of education to the online space and dormitory closures were carried out instantly and without any plans to ensure the participation of students belonging to marginalized communities in educational activities.

In this context, we contacted all of our students and we saw that in many cases, if we can’t provide them with additional scholarships, they wouldn’t be able to finish their school years or university terms. We set the goal of not allowing the effects of the crisis to take a toll on our students’ ability to finish the academic year. As providing additional scholarships exceeded the financial possibilities of our organization, we launched a crowdfunding campaign titled “Finish Line – Crisis Fund for Romani Students” to collect the necessary funds for providing additional scholarships to students in need.

The short-term impact of the activity was that we could provide cca. 150 EUR monthly scholarships for 12 students in April, 12 students in May, 14 students in June and 6 students in July. In personal interviews following the campaign, we saw that many of the recipients spent this amount directly related to the mitigation of the impact of the crisis on their ability to finish the academic year, like purchasing a good internet connection to the place where they were forced to move because of the closure of the dormitories.

As dormitories closed in mid-March, many of our students had to move back to overcrowded family homes. “When I need some space to attend online classes, I sit outside of our home in my family’s car,” wrote one of our students when sending this photo. We love this picture because it exemplifies the resilience of our student body.

A long-term impact on our students and Romaversitas was that our crowdfunding campaign received national attention via the press, and by reaching new donors, our coalition to carry out our mission broadened. During our crowdfunding campaign we collected cca. 8K EUR which is more than four times the average of the previous 3 crowdfunding campaigns of the organization. We also reached 70 percent more donors than in previous campaigns and the value of average donations more than doubled.

We managed to detach the messaging of the campaign from the usual socio-narrative which mostly dominates Romani issues in the media. Our campaign was centered around education and positive achievements which resonated well with our audience.

As soon as the pandemic situation got better in June, we organized an open-air event to close the academic year. The event was attended by several students, our staff, our founder and some key donors. It was encouraging to experience how much our community evolved during the pandemic.

Training ambassadors to rise above antigypsyism in Kosovo

Training ambassadors to rise above antigypsyism in Kosovo

In the last couple of months, ERGO Network was contracted by VoRAE (Voice of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians) to train various members of organizations working on the topic of antigypsyism. The purpose of the training course “Ambassadors rising above antigypsyism” (ARAA) was:

To raise awareness and deepen the recognition and understanding of antigypsyism and its implications in relation to empowering grassroots communities to stand up to discrimination
To support the exchange of experiences and good practices addressing issues of discrimination of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians in Kosovo
To develop the competences of 10 participants in raising understanding and awareness about antigypsyism, its implication and advocacy to promote positive narratives and inclusive policies.
To support regional cooperation and networking among Roma and pro-Roma activists
To drive policy change in recognizing antigypsyism as a primarycourse of inequalities for Roma

The overall expected outcome of the course was to motivate participants to become ambassadors in fighting against antigypsyism by raising awareness and addressing the phenomena, as well as leading the policy change through proactive advocacy.

The training course included a combination of online methods, using Zoom for group meetings, emails and worksheets. It was conducted by ERGO Network staff Gabriela Hrabranova, Isabela Mihalache and Mustafa Jakupov.

The training modules introduced the theoretical background of antigypsyism, mapped antigypsyism in the region, discussed how to act and re-act against antigypsyism through a human rights framework, as well as on learning different methods and developing trainers skills that will be further used by the participants to conduct workshops for and working with governmental and local officials. As final product of the course, ERGO Network is developing a Training of Trainers manual that will be used further by the participants trained as ambassadors.

It is important to mention that this course was the first of its kind in Kosovo where not only capacities and knowledge were being developed, but participants were able to share and analyse the realities of RAE communities and understand the political context in which they will operate.

From the 29-30 September, VORAE furthermore organized a Summit on antigypsyism in Prishtina, bringing together important stakeholders from Kosovo and abroad, including ERGO Network Director Gabriela Hrabanova, representatives of UN offices, embassies and other civil society organisations. The summit explored ways to combat antigypsyism in Kosovo and at European level and put a special emphasis on the role of women.

National Training Course on Human Rights Education

National Training Course on Human Rights Education in Spain

From 6-10 July 2020 FAGiC (the Federation of Roma Associations in Catalonia) together with Plataforma Khetané organized a National Training Course on Human Rights Education funded by the Youth Department of the Council of Europe.

The NTC “Training4Roma, Human Rights Training for Roma and non Roma youth activists” was held in the Library Font de La Mina, in the La Mina neighbourhood of Barcelona. The course targeted Roma and non Roma youth from different backgrounds who work with other young people to become multipliers of Human Rights education.

From the first moment, the environment was very good among the 13 participants willing to learn more and from each other. 4 young Roma participants were from the La Mina neighbourhood itself, stigmatized in the media as a “dangerous” place and criminalising the Roma inhabitants as potential drug traffickers.

In this way, the 4 young Roma students broke with the stereotypes not only of Roma, but also of the neighbourhood. Asked by the non-Roma participants, we organised a “guided tour” of the neighbourhood, explaining the historical construction from the exclusion perspective and how this has affected to the lives of the people living there.

The NTC was based on the COMPASS manual on Human Rights Education of the Council of Europe and also targeted Antigypsyism from the perspective of Human Rights. The training consisted of 3 parts:

Introduction to the topic of Human Rights through activities and methods from the manual and by sharing participants’ experiences. Following on, we went deeper into the topic of Antigypsyism and how to develop educational responses to it.
Providing space and time to participants to develop their facilitation skills. Participants did not only use activities from Mirrors or Compass, they also adapted them perfectly to the situation and to the goal they really wanted to achieve.
Evaluation and planning concrete follow-up activities

During the training, we received the visits from OND (Oficina per a la NO Discriminació) – Non Discrimination Office from the Council of Barcelona, from Catalan Human Rights Institute and also some local Roma initiatives fighting for Human Rights.

We thank the Municipality of Sant Adrià del Besòs, to which the neighbourhood belongs, for letting us use the whole library space in this difficult time due to Covid 19.

ERGO NETWORK BRIEFING PAPER Inclusive Education

ERGO NETWORK BRIEFING PAPER
Inclusive Education

Education is one of the five headline targets of the Europe 2020 Strategy: target of reducing early leavers of education and training to less than 10 percent of population aged 18 to 24, and increasing the tertiary educational attainment to 40 percent of the same age frame.

Download the briefing paper here