European Youth Against Antigypsyism Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Youth Against Antigypsyism

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social dialogue; Romas and/or other minorities; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project European Youth Against Antigypsyism (EYAA) established a strong international network of youth and Roma focused organizations coming from 5 European countries: Slovenia, the Netherlands, Croatia, Bulgaria and Italy. The central task of the partner consortium was to develop an innovative and advanced toolkit of education modules. In this way EYAA was, in fact, a parallel and also an upgrade of projects focusing solely on the empowerment of Roma youth. We developed educational modules that enabled youth workers to implement activities aimed at: increasing the sensibility of youth in relation to other cultures, increasing the levels of active citizenship and participation in social processes among young people, developing critical and media literacy, soft skills and gaining the knowledge of organizing cultural and sport events. A very important part of this was fostering meaningful interaction between Roma and non-Roma youth, which is one of the most sustainable ways of fighting discrimination and antigypsyism in the long term. On the other hand, this also enabled Roma youth to shed the stereotypes they hold about their non-Roma counterparts. Thus they also expanded their social circles, an important step towards integration and participation in broader social processes. The toolkit is based on nonformal learning, learning by doing, group activities, role-play, use of ICT, field work etc. It was developed for youth workers, who work with youth with fewer opportunities (e.g. Roma) and youth from the majority population as well. The consortium designed it through several stages with multiple evaluations leading to a high quality intellectual result. A real-life test of the modules was on the youth worker training held in Rome, which also offered critical insight to perfect the toolkit. In the creation process we used the rich and diverse array of experience of the partners and also of outside organizations, youth workers and Roma and non-Roma youth. The finished toolkit was presented at an international multiplicative event — conference — in Slovenia.

The project succesfully realised its goals:
– to design innovative education modules aimed at Roma and non-Roma youth
– decrease the level of antigypsyism in societies
– to increase the capacity youth organistions
– to develop the competences of youth workers
– to increase the level of social interaction between Roma and non-Roma youth
– to implement the intellectual result in the youth sector
– to foster interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral cooperation

The project involved 5 organizations, 22 youth workers, 12 Roma and non-Roma young people, 10 Roma and non-Roma volunteers and 10 experts attending the conference. We also reached over 100.000 indirect participants through our dissemination activities, multiplicative event, cultural and sports events and presence both in online, social and traditional media.

The impact of the project according to target groups:
– Participants in the training event increased their professional capacities, knowledge of working with youth with fewer opportunities, connecting youth with different cultural and social backgrounds.
– The participating youth and Roma organizations (within and without the consortium) increased their capacities by receiving a blueprint (print, online publication) for implementing high quality and innovative youth education modules based on effectively connecting different groups of young people. Because of the heterogeneous composition of the consortium the partner organizations received and shared knowledge from different fields and also greatly increased their international networks.
– Young people (both Roma and non-Roma, i.e. the end-users of the modules) benefited by the spread of the toolkit, which provided a considerable boost to their abilities of working in multicultural settings and of conflict solving, increased their language skills and awareness of their rights, their knowledge of ICT, they gained the skills to recognize systemic and other forms of discrimination and the knowledge of how to react to it, they increased their media and critical literacy and also learned how to express their needs and demands, they also gained the know-how of organizing cultural and sports events.
– Decision makers were included in some project activities (structured dialogues, conference); they gained critical insights into the fields of youth work and social inclusion.

The intellectual result was designed in such a way that it is be possible to implement it in different contexts and it is also be applicable to different vulnerable groups.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 74257,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

ZNANSTVENO-RAZISKOVALNO ZDRUZENJE ZA UMETNOST, KULTURNE IN IZOBRAZEVALNE PROGRAME IN TEHNOLOGIJO EPEKA, SOCIALNO PODJETJE & Country: SI

Project Partners

• Nevipe Press Rom News Agency
• Udruga mladih Roma Rijeka “Romska buducnost”
• ROMNI -APS
• REGIONAL CLUSTER NORTH-EAST