QUALIFLY PROJECT Ethnocultural Dialogue Foundation Bulgaria

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QUALIFLY PROJECTEthnocultural Dialogue
FoundationBulgaria

• Working meeting Istanbul14 -16 November 2005

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Lets talk about

• Bulgaria
• - General info
• Roma community in Bulgaria
• - Past and present
• Opportunities and challenges for Roma
• - Education and employment in focus

• The State and the NGO sector
• - Good example
• About us
• - Mission
• - Activities
• - Conclusions based on experience

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Bulgaria general info

• A country with a history of 1300 years, offering
  exceptional conditions for tourism and recreation
  and famous for its rose oil
• The democratic changes in the social-political
  life of our country started 15 years ago.
• In the present moment Bulgaria is one of the
  candidate countries for membership in the
  European Union

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Bulgaria population (2001)

• Total population 7 928 901

• Ethnic composition (official data)
• Bulgarian 6 655 210
• Turkish 746 664
• Roma 370 908
• Other

• Religious affiliation (official data)
• Bulgarian Orthodox82,6 Muslim -12,2
• Roman Catholic 0,6 Protestant 0,5
• Other 4,1

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Roma community in Bulgaria - Past and Present

• Centuries on end the Roma have been living on
  Bulgarian land. As it is all around the world,
  they are not a monolithic mass they are
  internally differentiated into a number of groups
  and subgroups according to their lifestyle, the
  religion they are confessing, or the professional
  specification of the group.
• The Roma people are the growing minority of the
  country

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Opportunities for Roma people- education
and employment in focus

• Opportunities
• After the democratic changes have set in, the
  Roma had and have the opportunity to speak freely
  their mother language, to study it at school, to
  create and write in their own language, to learn
  about their own history.
• A great number of cultural-educational
  organizations, movements and foundations, which
  take part in the solving of problems, connected
  with social-economical issues have been
  registered.
• On the 2 February 2005 Bulgaria was a hosting
  country of the opening of the Decade of the Roma
  integration 2005-2015.

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Challenges for Roma people- education and
employment in focus

• Problems, resulting from the unemployment
• The percentage of the totally illiterate among
  the young Roma reaches 25, and together with
  those, who share that it is difficult for them to
  read, the percentage reaches 60(!).
• High percentage of students, non-regularly
  attending or dropping out of school
• Left jobless and without means of earning their
  living, this group of illiterate Roma very often
  becomes part of the criminal contingent

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The State and the NGO Sector

• Ministry of Labour and Social Policy organizes
  courses for literacy and professional
  qualification for unemployed people, responding
  to certain requirements, with subsidies from the
  European Union.
• As a whole there is no active state policy for
  overcoming the illiteracy.
• Certain non-governmental organizations also work
  in this field, but their experience is not
  systematized, it is not generalized in order to
  be multiplied in practice

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Good Example - IIZ/DVV

• Institute for International Cooperation of the
  German Adult Education Association (IIZ/DVV)
• - Days of the lifelong learning
• Schools Second Chance
• Master program Management of Adult Education

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About us Ethnocultural Dialogue
Foundation

• The mission of the foundation is to contribute
  for the development of the ethnical tolerance and
  the social adaptation of the Roma community in
  the conditions created by the democratic changes
  through a dialogue between the different ethnical
  communities, the state and municipal
  administration, and the NGOs.
• An accent in the foundations activities are the
  educational and health programmes

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Activities

• 2001- Course for literacy and professional
  qualification for cook assistants for 15 young
  people, who grew up without parents and are
  accommodated in special boarding-houses
• 2002 project Help and self-help for the
  community project -40 women (seamstresses) and
  20 men (constructors) of Roma origin were trained
  and received professional qualification
• 2003/2004 - project School Second Chance - 16
  men and women of Roma origin graduated 8th grade,
  accomplished their primary education and gained
  professional qualification and were taught social
  skills and citizen education.
• 2004 project Second chance social
  integration through education - 150 men and
  women became literate

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Conclusions based on experience- I

• Need of training in social skills and citizen
  education
• Need of combination of education courses and
  education for accomplishment of an educational
  degree with education, providing professional
  qualification, which gives opportunity for a
  better job realization on the labour market
• Need of broader range of partnership with state
  and municipal administrations, with the
  employers unions and other organizations
• Need of international partnerships for the
  opening of more schools like Second Chance

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Conclusions based on experience- II

• Need of specialists, trained in the respective
  sphere
• Need of monitoring the quality of the knowledge
• Need of detailed analysis of the results and
  multiplication of outputs and didactic materials
  after the project ends.
• Need of the media involvement for popularization
  of the idea for continuing education as a factor
  for a better social integration of vulnerable
  groups of people.

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The end

• or
• just the beginning
• Thank you for your attention! ?