STEP IN Netherlands

The project took place in the municipality of Veldhoven, situated in the province of North Brabant, in the South of the Netherlands.

Target group
The children belonged to the small Roma community in Veldhoven, which is a transient community made up of legal and illegal immigrants. Some of the Roma have been in Holland for 30 years (former migrant workers), and some have arrived more recently (asylum seekers from the Balkans). The latter group of Roma is finding difficulty in being accepted by both their own people who have been longer in the Netherlands and the local native Dutch population. Both groups of Roma in Veldhoven are also finding difficulty in being accepted by the ethnically related Sinti, who have been living in the same area for almost a century. The project in Veldhoven focuses on the entire Roma group. The target group consisted of children aged between 12 / 18 years. They numbered about 35, about 1/3 were girls.

The Local Project
We identified the following obstacles and solutions for sustainable improvement of the education of young Roma in the Veldhoven area: 1. Obstacle: Reluctance within the Rom
a group itself to accept education.
Solutions: Involve mothers with infants to create a cultural basis for the acceptance of education. Hence the integration of the age group 0 - 4 into the project. Both children and mothers were motivated to accept education as a value.
2. Obstacle: The educational care according to the regular Dutch system is too fragmented (many schools and organisations exist), and too rigid (fixed age categories, bureaucracy) to adequately cater for a group of Roma children, which is difficult to define (no documentation, moving around, real age not clear, etc.).
Solutions: KPC groups were able to coordinate and integrate all activities of all organisations and actors involved (the mayor, the police, church, schools, adult education, etc.). The fieldworkers of the KPC group were following the children closely, literally throughout the whole process of education, as well as follow the educational location/ environment (from camp/caravan to adult education).
3. Obstacle: The usual difficulties when tackling Roma education problems, such as language, participation, the negative attitude of traditional Roma leaders towards education etc.
Solutions: A package of both curricular and extra curricular education, adapted to the specific needs of the schools and the students. Close contact with the families (camp/caravan) by the fieldworkers formed a crucial element in this package in order to:
- Improve their knowledge of the Dutch language (mothers and children).
- Provide from the outset a point of continuity of care and the creation of educational records that can be transferred to the local junior school at a later stage. (Education in the camp/at the caravan; and early participation in the kindergarten)
- Raise awareness of the importance of education in ROMA society as a whole, through the mothers enthusiastic involvement with the project.
- Motivate the parents into recognizing the aims of the project and to obtain their approval for their child participation.
- Get to know the families of the target group.
- Conduct family education (at the camp/caravan)
- Recognize and use the resources of the families for the project (mother role as basic educator and transmitter of culture at an early age)
- Change cultural values with regard to the need for education
- Offer individual help concerning the difficulties of the families
- Follow/reach the girls of the target group
- Build up a network between families, school, the project team and others.
- Promote the active involvement of young Roma leaders activists, and young Roma role models In the last phase of the project (7 months).

Negative points / difficulties:
- Mobility of the group (sometimes families and children travel for several weeks to another location). - Illegal status of some of the Roma families, which result in:
o A lack of reliable documentation (what is the actual age of the children? Who are the parents really?)
o Criminal activities (also by the children), which could interrupt the educational process (children sometimes disappear for some weeks)
- Although nominally/officially the entire community had committed itself to the project, in real life, discrimination is still a problem, especially for age 15+ when young people start to look for jobs.
- Participation of girls is low, especially at a later age.

Positive points / strengths:
This project seems to have succeeded through a real integrated approach (all institutions, societal levels and actors involved).
It also seems to have succeeded to change the traditional negative cultural attitude amongst Roma with regard to education. The most important element leading to this success seems to have been the involvement of mothers as cultural transmitters in the camp.