Project leader: Asociatia Co-Efficient Ungaria
Partners: Asociatia Nevo Parudimos, RROMA Macedonia
Period: 30.09.2020 – 29.09.2022
Budget: 104 497 EUR
Nr. of the project: 2020-1-HU01-KA205-078586
Nevo Parudimos Association, in partnership with the associations Co-Efficient – Hungary and RROMA – Macedonia, launched earlier this year a new international project targeting Roma communities in the 3 countries. The project is called Loose Ends and aims to learn about the lives of Roma and disadvantaged young people who attended special schools due to their different development, influenced by poor living conditions.
The project aims to create extensive research, based on interviews with young Roma who have been part of the special education system, to see what their lives are like today and what their common problems were and are.
According to current European studies and reports, most Roma children overrepresented in the lower social strata are more vulnerable to early school drop-out and most often only have access to segregated educational institutions.
The Loose Ends project started from a research carried out by Nevo Parudimos and the Hungarian organization Együttható Egyesület within the LEADNFL project which aimed the phenomenon of early school leaving in disadvantaged communities.
Starting from this initiative, we found that we need to emphasize and deepen, in addition to the general need for access to quality education, the need for special education for disadvantaged young people and children with special needs. Thus, Loose Ends aims to collect and analyze data in a specific way on the access of Roma children with special needs in special schools.
In many cases, although the diagnosis justifying the need for special education is valid, the socio-economic aspects behind a low-performing child are not taken into account. Deficiency of attention or intellectual disabilities could in fact be the result of lack of access to health care and forced early development, while lack of social capital and financial resources may lead to lack of access for Roma families to existing support structures in later stages. of child development (ie specific development, youth services, labor market services, etc.).
Lack of access to these services results in increasing the circle of poverty and marginalization, because the individual is stigmatized both because of ethnicity and because of the disability facilitated by the factors mentioned above.
The Loose Ends project will be implemented during 24 months and aims to:
-understanding the reasons, the negative influence of a deficient lifestyle and the consequences of education in segregated institutions by applying, analyzing and publishing 20 in-depth interviews in each partner country, which will discuss Roma children with special needs to identify the needs and problems they face;
– the formulation of political reform recommendations by a group of experts, based on the findings, addressed to national and European decision-makers, emphasizing the importance of the existence of secondary support structures in the form of youth organizations;
– awareness of representatives, professionals and decision makers in the sectors of formal education, secondary services for youth, child protection structures, government administration on the issues identified following the interviews.
The Loose Ends project is funded by the Erasmus + program.
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