STEP IN Slovakia

The project took place close to the city centre of Prievidza, an ex-mining town in the region of Upper Nitra. About 450 Roma families, live in this district totalling 1.500 people. The families live in blocks of .ats and barracks originally built for mine workers.

Target group
Young Roma and Roma families close to the city centre of Prievidza.

The local project
The partners, Diecezna Charita Nitra, together with a voluntary Christian association in Partizanske and a local Roma self governing civic association organised leisure activities.
The activities focussed especially on music, through which medium the children were encouraged to develop other abilities. Professional music teachers were employed to this purpose. The objective was to motivate young Roma’s to lead a responsible life style. Furthermore, a social worker was involved to give the young Roma’s guidance in learning their “rights and duties” in society.
The aim of the project was to develop leisure activities in order to help along the personal development of young Roma people, to prevent early school leaving and to encourage school attendance by giving support for learning skills. Meetings with families were also built into the project, in order to develop an ethical culture of behaviour between families and society. The families were supported in creating the right environment for personal growth of Roma youngsters.
For the sustainability of this kind of work it is necessary to support local Roma activists, which will lead to achieving political changes and acceptance of Roma people in society.

Negative points / difficulties:
The majority population have to learn not to put Roma into their own categories. The world of Roma thinking, their priorities and their culture is very different from that of the majority population. At the same time, the Roma culture has fallen apart. Family relations and moral values are not the way they used to be.
It was a big challenge to work with needy Roma people when non-perpetuity and impulsive behaviour jeopardised our long-term goals. Reacting emotionally to difficult situations ensuing from this attitude could mean the end of a relationship.

Positive points / strengths:
It is important not to isolate STEP IN’s educational package from a wider social dimension.
This is a long-term process, which needs active participation of all involved, namely the Roma themselves, state bodies (till now too much dependent on willy-nilly political willingness), self governing neighbourhoods and churches through their pastoral work. The participation of all these partners is necessary to build networks of local and national NGOs that support Roma initiatives based on moral values.
The strength of the educational package was that it was dealing with education in a wider context, which especially for Roma people, is indispensable. The package worked well, because it contained elements of prevention, relation building between the Roma and the majority population.