STEP IN Romania

The project took place in a village called Cojasca, 45 km from Bucharest. About 3500 people live there, the majority are Roma people. They have electricity (even if some of dispose of it illegally), heating (coal and wood) and water (wells/ fountains). Not many people own a car. Many use horse and carts for different jobs and for getting around. Almost all people in Cojasca have seasonable jobs building little brick house furnaces.

The target group
The two Romanian partners, Association Aproapele and Caritas Bucharest collaborated with the Foundation for People Development (FDP) for implementing the activities of the project at local level. The Foundation for People Development has been running a large Community Development Programme since 1998. The activities from the STEP IN Project formed part of this Programme in the village of Cojasca.
- Association Aproapele financed the activities with 54 young pupils attending the 8th year of compulsory education.
The Target group was formed by Roma and Romanian children to avoid separation the two groups.
For this reason the activities could not be targeted only to children that were officially declared Roma people (however, the majority of the target group are Roma people).
- Caritas Bucharest worked with a group of 30 girls aged between 14 and 16, who specialized in tailoring.

The local project:
The activities with the two target groups were very similar. The aim of the project was to prevent early school leaving, to encourage further education and to help young Roma’s to approach the world of work. The organizations Association Aproapele, Caritas Bucharest and FDP believed these children should be offered alternatives on how to get on in the world. They decided they wanted to help them develop an inner motivation for wanting to get more out of life. For this reason they planned the following activities:
- Didactic support, to help youngsters to finish their school year successfully, perhaps even opening up possibilities to continue education in a secondary school.
- Job orientation and professional training: the project aims at showing the young pupils which job possibilities would be available once they have finished school. It is important that they are aware of the variety of jobs from which they could choose. They should not be bound to do the same job as their parents. The job orientation was offered to them after school hours consisting of individual counselling, group counselling, visits to different secondary schools and job places, meetings with different professional models.
- Health education, which consists of lessons of different specialists to meetings where they were talking to children about various themes: hygiene, nutrition, sexual diseases (some students are affected by AIDS), effects of cigarettes and alcohol on the human body.

Negative points / difficulties:
- Indifference of parents regarding their children’s education. There was a necessity to work closely with the parents, because they are the .rst people who should advise/stimulate their children to aim at a better life through education.
- The short term nature of the activities: it is difficult enough to start these kind of activities, which is why it is important to keep them going as it is the only way to get results for the long term. There are not enough resources to motivate these children on a continuous basis.
- Delays: sometimes the activities were delayed, because of deficiencies in communication/collaboration. Deadlines had been decided on and had been agreed by all partners of the project, but were not always met.
This sometimes jeopardised our credibility with the local partners. It was felt that more time was needed for the reports and the evaluation, especially as these were construed with the involvement of the beneficiaries.
- Absence of collaboration from some of the teachers: the collaboration with teachers suffered from economic and cultural differences. The teachers commuted daily from places 40 km beyond Cojasca, sometimes they received expenses for their travel from the local authorities, sometimes they did not. The teachers felt a great cultural difference between them and the children felt that the lack of immediate results was frustrating. Children in their turn sometimes, felt earmarked for negative reasons and consequently their behaviour would get worse.
- Association Aproapele did not succeed to get involved in sport activities as was foreseen.

Positive points / strengths:
- Sustainability: activities have been integrated in the school curriculum. The teachers have learned the methodology and will continue practising this after the end of the project.
- It was an advantage that FDP had had activities in Cojasca for a long time. They had experience in working with this target group, their representatives were trusted by the local authorities and by the didactic staff from the school and the kindergarten.
- Collaboration and support: working and collaborating closely with FDP (without FDP there would have been no possibility to realize the activities). Collaboration with the school (teachers, school director, children).
Availability and agreement of the class teachers to conduct activities proposed in their classes. - Difference and novelty of the project’s activities compared to the existing school curriculum. The enthusiasm, availability, involvement, participation in our activities by children, teachers and the FDP team showed how necessary this project was for the target group.
- Permanent contact: maintaining permanent contact with children, teachers through the FDP team. The importance of direct work with the target group and spending time together in locations offered by FDP and the school. The good and close collaboration with FDP contributed to the achievement of the goals for the project.
- The presence of different NGO-s in the field: Association Aproapele could only finance part of the expenses for the activities accomplished. FDP supplemented the costs and in this way project aims could be achieved.
- The activities implemented in the local project helped the Roma youngsters to see other opportunities that could improve their educational level. During the activities, the group co-operated very well. There was a 100% attendance to the project’s activities. The interest in learning and finding out information increased. The educational trip was an opportunity for the girls (doing tailoring) to start looking for a job after they will have graduated. In fact, two of the girls were promised a job in the factory they visited.

Download (.zip 536 Kb .jpg) some pictures showing activities at school