Glimmers of Hope

Romani T.R.U.S.T. is the leading Roma advocacy NGO in Craiova, a city with one of the largest Roma communities in Europe. Their office is on the second floor of a non descript building, with one large room and two cramped offices in the back. A large conference table dominated the space, with an odd assortment of metal chairs. An old couch pushed up against the wall sagged under the weight of piles of binders and paper.

Alin Badu, the organization’s leader, was an energetic man with a tired look in his eye. Behind the shadows, though, there was no mistaking the passion or the conviction for his work. “When you want to have results, you have to work [in the field] with a small group for ten, fifteen, twenty, a hundred years. Whoever tells you they are working at the national level is bullshit.” Alin believes that closing the achievement gap is a matter of reversing mindsets, and political organization. He looks towards a slightly distorted version of the civil rights movement as an example, citing the election of Obama and Brown vs. Mississippi as points of hope for him that things could improve.

Despite his hope and rhetoric, the reality is that nobody quite knows how to tackle the Roma issue. Almost every program that I discussed with T.R.U.S.T. and their counterpart Romani Criss was labeled as a ‘pilot’ or a ‘study,’—meaning they were small programs that gathered data or tested methods. With the exception the mediator program, discussed below, no programs had been scaled to more than a few schools. It’s not surprising considering the tiny resources at their disposal. Neither organization receives money from the Romanian government. They are forced to raise funding on a project by project basis from international private donors, EU money pools, and UNICEF.

The problem is huge, so the organization is stretched thin. Ali explained that T.R.U.S.T. was divided into five departments: employment, education, health, housing, and human rights. It sounded like they were trying to run a Gates foundation with three employees and a few subcontracters.

“We’ve got 2260 cases we’re tracking,” he said, gesturing to the paper towers behind me. “One for each applicant.” The organization is currently working on a pilot employment program to help members of the Romani community find jobs. The team had been overwhelmed by applications. Only 325 of the 2260 were accepted for job counseling. Most of those dropped out. The remaining 150 got vocational training in their choice of Hair Dressing, Construction, Cooking and Service, or entrepreneurship. 15 of them got jobs. There was simply not enough help to go around.

Still, huge strides have been made. The biggest of these was the mediator program. The mediator is a respected member of the Roma community that is the communication link between the school and the parents, a cultural gap that many teachers cannot bridge. They help rectify problems of discrimination, and smooth out tense relationships between Roma and the school staff. Mario Nedelica, a mediator from Craiova, said “the most important thing is just convincing the parent to keep their kids in school.” He helps in other ways, too. Sometimes parents have him speak with their children about poor performance or ditching classes. Once, he talked an 11 year old boy into kicking his cigarette habit. The job takes about 4 hours a day, and is a labor of love. “Some months I get paid, some months no.” On the months the check does come in, it’s for 70 euros; Mario doesn’t even know who pays it. Despite the passion he and other put into their work, their power is limited. It comes from their ability to balance the respect of the school administration, the teachers, and the Roma community. Should a case of strong and repeated discrimination arise, all they can do is speak to parents and the director, hoping for a sympathetic ear.

All these programs are a step in the right direction. They aim to break cycles of poverty and cultural misunderstandings. But the problem lays a little deeper, and fixing it will take a long time. It’s easy to compare this to the situation that blacks faced in the first half of the 20^th century. But the Roma are far from achieving those gains. They are ethnically splintered and politically weak. The real problem is that most Roma do not want to be integrated. They value too much their culture and way of life. Real change will come with a good leader, one who can create a Roma community with pride and direction. Only then will the Roma become a core part of the economy and education system without fear of losing their culture and identities. For now, there is no leader who is willing to confront that challenge. “Real change,” said Liviu, “will only come when we have a gypsy president.”

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