Within the project Give them a chance (acronym GEM) the project partners from Slovenia, Hungary
and Croatia will prepare a training program for teachers, who in different educational and
professional adult trainings educate the members of Roma ethnic manority. The educators of the
adults, that work in area with members of Roma ethnic minority and include them in different
educational programs, are also facing the lack of need for development and ascent of competences
of professional staff (teachers), who educate the members of Roma ethnic minority in adult
educational programs and we are facing similar problems, such as:
a) high decrease of the number of members of Romani ethnic minority, as in programs of formal
education as well in professional training;
b) unsuccesfulness of adult Roma in all forms of education and trainings, and also extremly poor
teaching achievements;
c) educational drop-outs, due to different reasons (poor understanding of the language of the
majority and vocabulary, poor grafomotoric skills, demotivation due to different system values, low
self-esteem,…).
Success in education of adult Roma often depends upon their motivation for visiting the. Roma are
experiencing every situation, in witch they appear, extremely emotional, so because of this one must
act with them, also in education, extremely subtile, above all is necessary to offer them large rate of
understanding and accepting them with all their specialities, which causes many problems for
teachers within the adult education.
Many teachers, that teach in our programs, don't have concrete experiences with teaching the adult
members of Romani ethnic minority. No formal program of education, that future teachers are being
educated about, has given knowledge how to teach members of different vulnerable groups and
consider their social and linguistic specifics.
Because of this have the project partners, LU Lendava, POU Čakovec, Amrita obk Pécs, UZOR
Orehovica and Romani Union of SLovenia decided, that we will prepare a program for the teachers in
educational and professional programs for adults, that educate the members of Romani ethnic
minority. In that way we will contribute to development of competences for working with adult
Romani population, and in direct way contribute to higher success of adult Roma in formal and
informal education, as well in adult professional trainings. Before the preparation of training program
we will perform an extensive research and do the analysis of the needs, we will also manage to
provide preparation of quality program of training to raise the competences of teachers, who teach
adult Roma in educational programs, as such will be implemented in pilot training program
realisations and the gained competences will be tested in practice. The Roma, that will take part in
education within the project, will prepare a manifesto of learning of members of Romani ethnic
minority, in which they will describe what kind of teaching and learnig they wish to have.
Partnership, that was formed in the project, wasn’t created only for the needs of the project, but our
cooperation has already existed for longer time, however, as partners we matured to this degree,
that we dare to accede to implement such an important idea with our knowledge and experiences,
above all for the Romani community. Our wish is not only to qualify and develop the competences of
the teachers for their work with adult members of Romani ethnic minority, but also to enpower the
Romani ethnic minorities in the field of education. The common idea is not the only thing that
connects the partners, but also our shared past and culturally-historical base.