The best Roma inclusion initiatives have been tendered at European level
On 21-22 April 2021 the partners in the project “New solutions to old problems – exchange of new type of approaches in the field of Roma integration” gathered online for the “Project Market” where they shared their best practices of Roma inclusion and empowerment projects and “bid” on each other’s projects to implement similar initiatives in their own communities.
The event was aimed to showing the great wealth of experience of Roma civil society and the impact that bottom-up approaches to Roma inclusion, empowerment and fighting antigypsyism can have.
For the event, all partners had to identify up to 3 local good practices from their own or their partners’ work on Roma inclusion and empowerment. These good practices were presented in the ‘Project Market’ to other consortium partners so everyone could select someone else’s good practice that fits to their own community needs.
Projects that were ”won” at the ”auction” will need to be adapted it to different contexts, planned in detail with the community and will then be kicked off. The ‘project owner’ who proposed this project will act as a coach during the entire period. The good practices will include for example supporting companies to recruit Roma employees, a mothers’ center, a volunteering program with elderly homes and a motivational re-training project for unemployed Roma. All partners are rooted in local Roma communities so they can easily reach out to and involve their target group.
The meetings also gathered guests from numerous International Organisations, embassies and and partner civil society organisations, among them the EEA and Norway Grants, EU Justice and Consumers, the Embassy of Norway, Tom Lantos Institute, ERSTE Foundation, Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma, Hildegard Lagrenne Stiftung.
From a total of 23 projects that were put on the table, 13 of them were “bought” and will be implemented in the future.
“New solutions to old problems – exchange of new type of approaches in the field of Roma integration” is funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Regional Cooperation.
