A significant proportion of Roma men and women in Slovakia live in segregated communities, mainly in the least developed regions. They have faced ethnic and social discrimination for decades. According to the EU SILC MRK survey (Office of the Government Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities 2021), in 2020, a total of 87% of households in marginalized Roma communities (MRC) were at risk of poverty, and 52% faced severe material deprivation. Roma families living in the MRC face multiple exclusions, and this leads to enormous burdens and toxic stress experienced by both parents and children from early childhood, which puts their development at risk. In addition, many parents living in the MRC are not equipped with the parenting skills and knowledge to adequately support their children’s development from birth. The EU SILC survey also showed that only 32% of Roma children aged 3 to 6 years attended kindergarten, compared to 87% in the general population. Roma children are often segregated in education, as evidenced by the recent European Commission lawsuits against Slovakia and the decision of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic.
This is why we have been implementing the Roma Community Development Programme since 2015, through which we strive to:
- Improve opportunities for children living in disadvantaged situations to successfully complete their education, thereby increasing their chances of leading a fulfilling life and breaking out of generational poverty.
- To create fair opportunities for the development of Roma children in early childhood in a disadvantaged situation compared to other children in society.
- To contribute to the overall social inclusion of people living in the MRC.
The Roma Community Development Programme supports activities focused on early childhood care and the development of parenting skills. It also aims to break down prejudices and raise awareness in society towards people from excluded Roma communities. Since 2015, we have been implementing the programme in cooperation with the Ekopolis Foundation in the Košice, Prešov and Banská Bystrica regions.
The Roma Community Development Programme has gone through four phases since 2015.
- The first phase involved supporting various activities to strengthen Roma inclusion at the local level, including work on parenting skills for young parents, creating livelihoods and supporting access to decent housing.
- The second phase was the provision of pre-school education for disadvantaged children, as this was identified as one of the most important issues with a significant long-term impact on Roma inclusion.
- The third stage focused on strengthening support for early childhood development in Slovakia and building the foundations for its sustainability.
- The aim of the fourth stage is to achieve sustainable provision of quality early childhood education and care services for children at risk of developmental delay across Slovakia.
Objectives we have been working on in the last 2 phases:
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Early Care – to support the education and care of young children who are developmentally at risk for bio-psycho-social reasons.
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Strengthening the expertise and sustainability of the capacity of NGOs providing early childhood education and care services.
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Building the conditions for the creation of sustainable provision of early childhood education and care services not only for children from socially excluded backgrounds.
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Creating a platform for promoting early childhood development bringing together organisations, institutions and academics.
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Building the expertise of future early childhood workers to understand the issues of Roma exclusion from society and integrated inclusive approaches in early childhood education.
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Awareness-raising in mainstream society, in an attempt to achieve an understanding of diversity, to empathise with the situation of people from excluded communities and to try to see it differently.
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Promoting education and eliminating prejudice in secondary school students.
Programme activities:
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We support training and expertise building of NGOs. In addition to financial support to work with children and their parents, we have supported organizations through educational opportunities. These have focused on quality early childhood care provision, but also on increasing the sustainability and organizational development of organizations.
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We have created a training programme for pedagogy/social work students at a selected university, which includes guest lectures and partnerships for placements in organizations providing early childhood care in marginalized Roma communities.
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We run a professional web platform odperinky.sk, which focuses on the topic of early childhood care and education support for children in excluded communities, as well as early childhood care support in general.
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In collaboration with the Research Institute of Child Psychology and Pathopsychology, we have created a developmental measurement tool and have gradually improved it so that we can measure and improve early childhood care and education interventions. Results from the measurement and methodology can be found HERE.
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Together with other stakeholders, we are influencing the early childhood care system nationally and locally.
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We are also implementing awareness-raising activities, which you can read more about HERE.
As part of the 7th year of the programme, we are currently working on the establishment of OdPerinky – Platform for Early Childhood Development. OdPerinky's vision is that every child has access to support for their optimal development at an early age. The platform was initiated by eight NGOs providing early childhood education and care and/or early intervention services to children with developmental risks due to psycho-biological and environmental factors.
