ERRC Annual Roma Rights Summer School Comes to a Close
04 August 2010
Budapest, 4 August 2010: The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) held its annual Roma Rights Summer School at the Council of Europe European Youth Center in Budapest from 25 July to 4 August 2010. This year, 22 young Romani and Traveller participants from Ukraine, Moldova, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands were introduced to domestic and international human rights legislation as well as monitoring, advocacy and community organising skills and tools.
Participants were actively engaged throughout the Summer School, enthusiastically discussing the issues. As Owen, an Irish participant put it, the ERRC Roma Rights Summer School offered a “safe place for all of us to be able to express ourselves freely on the issues Romani people face in today’s realities.” While many participants agreed that the course offered them “clarity on how to approach issues on the ground and how to improve the existing projects they run in the communities,“ as Maria from Hungary said, it also provided them with “hands-on, practical applications of the existing human rights laws,” according to Aida from Serbia.
The Roma Rights Summer School is an intensive 10-day course filled with workshops led by experts in human rights and Romani issues, group discussions and practical sessions with young Roma and Travellers from all around Europe. It aims to develop the professional skills and knowledge of a new generation of Romani human rights activists and to empower them to actively participate in the development of their communities.
The participants are encouraged to identify the most critical issues from their communities and share good practices and challenges that can be addressed at grassroots levels. This year, the participants identified 7 key issues within their communities – access to education, personal documents, employment, health care and housing, freedom of movement and migration and violence against Roma - which became the main focus of all the activities during the Summer School. Trainers addressed these specific issues and offered a theoretical framework in which participants could structure and approach problems, equipping them with practical tools to tackle the pressing everyday problems of Roma and Travellers.
One of the most successful accomplishments of the Summer School is the general feeling of shared pride between the participants who found it “wonderful to be around educated Roma who share the same culture and experiences”, as Ivelin from Bulgaria explained. “The people that I met here are the most valuable part of the programme!” concluded another participant before hurrying out for the Summer School Alumni group picture.
For further information, please contact:
Catherine Twigg, ERRC Communications Officer, catherine.twigg@errc.org, +36.30.500.1289
