Rights and Participation of Roma Children and Youth
The Rights and Participation of Youth and Children component of our Roma Program focuses on examining patterns of major and everyday discrimination and structural and social inequities that Roma children and youth face in accessing education, health, training, work, and civic engagement. At Harvard FXB Center, we have conducted research projects employing participatory and case study methodologies to identify and understand inequities, sources of success and resilience, and legal and policy responses in this area. Our research, implemented in partnership with local NGOs and young people, has revealed widespread stigmatization of Roma children and youth, particularly in schools. We have also worked with young people to identify potential institutional solutions to address major and everyday discrimination.
Romani Champions // Reclaiming Adolescence // Combating Segregation of Roma Children in Schools
One in One Hundred (initially titled Romani Champions): 2015-2018
The One in One Hundred project continued a partnership between Harvard FXB and the Center for Interactive Pedagogy (the CIP Center), which began with the Reclaiming Adolescence project, a participatory action research initiative with Romani and non-Romani youth in Serbia (see below).
One in One Hundred added a different perspective to build on the community strengths and needs identified in Reclaiming Adolescence. While maintaining the participatory element of the previous project, One in One Hundred also partially shifted the focus from addressing obstacles to investigating success and resilience factors. The project partners aimed to identify the factors that enabled a very small number of young Roma people to successfully enroll in university (only 1 percent of Roma youth reach tertiary education), despite structural inequities and discrimination.
Harvard FXB and the CIP Center, with support from OneWorld Boston (Cummings Foundation) implemented the research portion of the One in One Hundred project in Serbia in 2015 and 2016. The activities were implemented in four university cities in Serbia: Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, and Nis.
Using a mixed-methods approach, we examined the factors that have enabled 100 students to succeed. We then examined the differences between these students and similarly located 100 Romani adolescents who had not reached college. Four Roma students were recruited as members of the research team and three as mentors, continuing our participatory approach to Roma-related research.
Read the One in One Hundred: Drivers of Success and Resilience among College-Educated Romani Adolescents in Serbia study here.
Read the “$100K for 100 Romani Champions in Serbia” blog post.
This innovative project used participatory action research to (a) assess the education, employment, and civic opportunities available to Roma adolescents, (b) identify practices that can be scaled to improve their access to such opportunities, and (c) provide the evidence, the strategy, and the advocacy platform to overcome obstacles to their empowerment. Through a combination of training, capacity building, research, advocacy and community action, the project helped improve the school-to-work transition of Roma youth and helped propel Roma and non-Roma teenagers to the forefront of policy development.
Over the course of two years in Belgrade, Reclaiming Adolescence worked with 20 Roma and non-Roma youth representing a wide variety of backgrounds to pioneer an approach that empowers youth. The first of its kind for Roma youth, the project adopted a bottom-up approach, giving young people and the community an opportunity to have their voices heard and to design activities that foster community agency and ownership. One young Romani researcher remarked, “Several times during the interview, she [the interviewee] told me ‘you understand me, you know what I am talking about’ when she spoke about the discrimination that she faced in school. It mattered to her that I had had the same experiences.”
The team of young researchers interviewed 360 peers and parents on education, training, and work opportunities in an effort to understand the obstacles to accessing these rights. The youth also interviewed an additional 40 policymakers, teachers, social workers, and engaged them in dialogue about equal education and youth participation.
The findings from this project have shed greater light on Roma adolescent engagement and the high interest of these young people in breaking the intergenerational cycle of poor access to education.
In addition, the adolescent researchers designed three small-scale projects at the community level and implemented those measures themselves. They designed and facilitated workshops and interactive theater to raise awareness on discrimination, stigma, and prejudice among non-Roma youth.
This project was a collaboration between Harvard FXB, the Center for Interactive Pedagogy, and Save the Children Serbia, with support from the Cummings Foundation.
Read article: “FXB Center in Kosovo”
Watch video: Interview with Young Researchers on the Project (video in Serbian with English subtitles)
Read abstract, “Reclaiming Adolescence: A Roma Rights Perspective,” Harvard Educational Review (forthcoming, 2017)
Between 2012 and 2014 Harvard FXB provided research assistance to Dare-NET (Desegregation and Action for Roma Education Network), a transnational network of organizations examining the segregation of Roma pupils in Europe. The interventions we analyzed were implemented in six European Union countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, and Romania. We documented and analyzed interventions that promote desegregation and help ensure equal opportunities for quality education.
For our report on this project we used a case study methodology to develop a practice-based inventory of desegregation. The findings are based on desk research (online, government and NGO published data) and semi-structured interviews (92 individual or group interviews), with group interviews conducted in all six countries.
Interviewees included parents and plaintiffs involved in two legal cases: Oršuš and Others vs. Croatia and D.H. and Others vs. Czech Republic. Additional information on Horvath and Kiss vs. Hungary was gathered by project partners Chance for Children Foundation and Romani CRISS (Roma Center for Social Intervention and Studies). We visited and interviewed representatives of schools and kindergartens in Kutina, Croatia; Mursko Sredisce, Croatia; Thessaloniki, Greece; Zavet, Bulgaria, and Horni Suca, Czech Republic.
Read the full report: Strategies and Tactics to Combat Segregation of Roma Children in Schools
Read the executive summary of Strategies and Tactics to Combat Segregation of Romani Children in Schools
Read the op-ed: Fighting School Segregation in Europe