Regional Roma Educational Youth Association

RROMA is a youth-led organization that works on empowerment and mobilization of young Roma

through creative methods and campaigning in order for them to become active citizens and positive

role models in their communities. RROMA works on the personal development of young Roma

through non-formal education, also on the advocacy of young Roma to remain enrolled in the

process of education. RROMA is active in the North-eastern region of North Macedonia. Until this

point in time, RROMA has conducted activities on strengthening the capacity of its members through

seminars, workshops, debates etc. Themes such as: minorities rights, human rights, lobby and

advocacy, leadership, team building, campaigning, creative methods, Roma culture etc. are very

common topics for RROMA. In the past, the organization became the first Roma NGO to be

appointed of the MK National Agency as a National contact point for promoting the Youth in Action

programme among Roma youngsters in North Macedonia. As well, the organization received the

MTV Staying Alive Award in 2010 for its creative action to raise awareness among youngsters

regarding HIV/AIDS, thus making it the first Roma and macedonian organization in the world to

receive such award. In March 2017, RROMA was awarded the 2nd prize in frame of the second

edition of the EU Roma Integration Award for Western Balkans and Turkey. Later in 2017, the

organization had 2 projects nominated as good practices in Erasmus plus on the Eu level.

As an organization, RROMA always works with new methods to foster the intercultural dialogue

between European countries, between Roma and non-Roma. We promote the diversity of languages,

cultures, identities and forms of artistic expressions as strength. Using art as action and tool, we

managed to promote our philosophy of intercultural dialogue, anti-racism and the inclusion of

minorities to a broad public by organizing flashmobs in Kratovo and Skopje, as part of youth

exchanges. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTFm-Vyhus4;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJWzGTTHlOk).

The RROMA service is group of young Roma leaders who are doing non-formal education of their

peers. The aim is for the young Roma attending these meetings of non-formal education to become

active citizens. Additionally, the vision is for those young individuals to become active members of

RROMA. The service is an after-school activity during the school year in five Municipalities, using the

active members of RROMA to teach their peers when the school year starts and provide creative

leisure time. The topics are various including human rights, minorities’ rights, lobby and advocacy,

but also daily school problems that concern the youth.

RROMA already started a process by creating guidelines to strengthen quality support systems for

Roma youth, thus to develop a comprehensive approach on the issue of youth work with Roma and

non-Roma on local, national and international level, to strengthen cooperation and relations between

Roma and non-Roma youth and youth organizations in order to strengthen the conceptual

understanding for intercultural dialogue, youth empowerment and mobilization and increase their

involvement in the broader European youth movement

(http://issuu.com/rroma/docs/guidelines_for_building_a_quality_s/1)

Also as an organization RROMA is organizing comic workshops, creating comics made by the

participants (http://issuu.com/rroma/docs/roman/1; http://zastitise.blogspot.com/2014/05/comicworkshop-17-18052014.html; http://zastitise.blogspot.com/2011/04/comic-drawing-in-kratovo.html )

We strongly support the process of learning and creating something in a group of young people by

giving them the space to express themselves. We are using a lot of different methods to empower

young people's creativity, such as group-building activities, getting to know each other, methods of

intercultural learning; tool theatre: used to exchange the vision of the future in Europe; market of skills

(giving and taking): youngsters teaching each other based on their own skills and interests. For

RROMA it is important to have active citizens and positive roles models among the younger

generation, as well the voice of young people to be heard.

The organization is involved in local decision-making of youngsters and for that purpose has signed

12 memorandums of understanding with 12 local municipalities and developed action plans that are

going to be implemented by the local youth groups. The aim is to bring youngsters closer to

democratic process happening on the ground and make them active citizens.

The organization has experience working on online platforms, such as romareact.org, contributing to

the development of the site with its administrators and leading off-line activities to educate young

Roma how to report, use the web-site and work with web 2.0 tools. The organization trained youth

volunteers to create their own video and media content for the International campaign "Typical Roma"

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3gnQL0XyOg)

Recently, RROMA started to work on youth entrepreneurship and employability by conducting

researches on that topic and discover the interrelations between minorities rights, youth employment

and its impact on active citizenship. The organization has been among the 9 awarded organization

by the YES foundation in North Macedonia. The topic about youth employment has been addressed

in the 2016 multi-measure project supported by E+ and first of such kind in North Macedonia. The

project involves 10 partners and targets 150 youngsters directly through its activities.

From 2016, the organization is leading a coalition of Roma and pro-Roma organizations in North

Macedonia supported by a 4 year grant from the European commission, running advocacy activities,

capacity building, creating shadow reports for the EC progress report etc. The aim is to strengthen

the Roma civil society and create partnerships with the relevant stakeholders and institutions targeting

Roma inclusion and integration in society.

RROMA works actively on the recognition of the Roma genocide during WWII, as part of the

international Roma youth network ternYpe (http://2august.eu/about-us/). The organization had

various activities addressing this topic, with projects like Migration Never Stops, Dik in a bistar etc.

This practice has been continued in the recent E+ projects both in North Macedonia, Germany,

Romania, Poland etc. RROMA has experience in facilitation and preparation of educational activities

about Remembrance and Holocaust, also staff members have experience in preparing and

conducting meetings with Holocaust survivors. In 2016, RROMA was contributing to the second

edition of the Handbook "Right to remember" of the CoE - working on Roma genocide remembrance

with young people, by using the handbook and working with young people, afterwards delivering

feedback. RROMA used and worked with 38 young people on the topic and distributed 38 copies of

it to the young people, that they afterwards use to organize their own workshops in their communities.

Recently, RROMA is coordinating a project that is targeting the Western Balkans concerning the

Roma Genocide during World War II, working on educational materials and campaign actions.

Through PECAO, RROMA works on addressing antigypsyist hate speech online and focuses on the

following objectives with its partners:

1. To reach out to at least 2000 young people in Spain, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania,

Bulgaria, Ukraine, Italy, France, North Macedonia and Albania through peer education

activities in universities or youth clubs to raise their awareness of the adverse impact of hate

speech on Roma and to empower them to recognise and report hate speech online.

2. To empower 50 young Roma peer educators in 10 countries to monitor hate speech in online

media and report cases of hate speech to IT companies, national equality bodies and relevant

state institutions to reinforce implementation of anti-discrimination legislation. Their work will

lead to national datasets of at least 150 cases, as well as at least 50 reported cases.

3. To advocate towards national and EU decision-makers for anti-discrimination policies that

take into account the online sphere as well as antigypsyism as a bias motivation for hate

speech and hate crime.

4. To use the experiences of peer educators and results of the monitoring to raise awareness

of other stakeholders (wider civil society, educational practitioners, young people)of

antigypsyist hate speech in online media and the urgency to counteract.

By the EEA and Norway grant supported project, RROMA works on supporting Roma communities

through implementing inclusion and empowerment projects that have proven to be successful in

other communities. At the same time we want to create a more favourable environment for bottomup approaches to Roma integration, breaking the vicious circle of cynicism that ‘nothing can be

changed’.

It will achieve this by delivering the following outputs:

1. Promoting community-led projects:

o 11 projects based on community needs that have been identified as good practices

in other organisations are adapted and implemented in local Roma communities

o 20-30 good practice examples of local Roma inclusion and empowerment projects

are identified and disseminated with ideas for adaptation and upscaling

o Roma community organising and Roma civil society promoted through film and

story-telling

2. Increased capacity of Roma civil society organisations:

o Staff of Roma CSOs trained in project and organisational management

o Toolkit on project and organisational management for CSOs published

o Transparency and accountability criteria implemented by CSOs

3. Favourable funding environment:

o Study on importance of bottom-up approaches to Roma inclusion produced and

disseminated

o Analysis of funding programmes on Roma inclusion conducted and disseminated

o Donors more aware of the importance of bottom-up approaches to Roma inclusion