European Tribune - Comments - Bulgarian Gypsies (Counter Argument)!

Bulgarian Gypsies (Counter Argument)! | 176 comments (176 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Bulgarian Gypsies (Counter Argument)! (none / 1)

Some of the projects included workshops and awareness campaign where Romas are given advices of how they can benefit by becoming involved in the civil society, how to set up their own NGO, how to make projects how to apply to different international organization for financial assistance and raise funds. So, this kind of workshops and seminars might have helped to the spread of the information and might have been interesting and promising to certain Romas to undertake such activity on their own.

This seems to me like a very interesting approach. I had already noticed that several of the initiatives I looked at where grant funded by foundations. I went back and took a closer look at the Macedonia Romani NGO study:

Romani NGOs can be found throughout Macedonia with the bulk of the active NGOs based in Skopje. Very few of the NGOs could supply reliable data regarding the size of their client base however on average they served 245 people annually. Over 32 donors were supporting the ten NGOs interviewed with the majority receiving funding from both international and national donors. The most frequently mentioned international donors were OSCE, UNHCR and OSI-Budapest; national donors were Soros-Macedonia, MCIC and ECMI. Only Luludi (Skopje) received governmental support. All Romani NGOs supplied project proposals including annual reports and most were willing to make such reports public.
Source: http://www.rrommedia.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=29

and at some of the Bulgarian TVRoma funding:

At the end of 2001 as a result of a grant from the Media Program of the Open Society Institute in Budapest, Roma TV bought in modern technical equipment. Training accompanied the equipment grant. As a result the technical resources of Roma TV are equal to those of the other cable stations in the region. Now TV Roma has production capability suitable for quality programs and distribution at the local and national level.web site

It reminds me a bit (this is a gross over simplification I know) of the way regions in France gained a certain amount of "autonomy" to implement their own plans by being able to get European Union funding for initiatives and not having the French administration in Paris be the only source of project funding.

I noticed, for example, that the Soros foundation has a Roma Participation Program grant specifically designed to fund Roma initiatives and the European Commission has an internship program for young Roma university graduates from all new EU member states (excluding Cyprus and Malta), Bulgaria, Croatia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro (including Kosovo), and Turkey.

by Alexandra in WMass (alexandra_wmass[a|t]yahoo[d|o|t]fr) on Thu Apr 20th, 2006 at 11:05:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bulgarian Gypsies (Counter Argument)! (4.00 / 3)

Soros, though the most corrupted institution in Macedonia, has helped considerably to the development of the Roma's nongovernmental sector. Yet what I've heard of Memet (I've mentioned him in some of the previous posts) is that he was not able to get scholarship from Soros although he applied as a Roma citizen and was the only one to apply. So he contacted some Roma NGO, i think the name of the NGO was Roma Veritas, who got him a scholarship from Soros Foundation (Open Society Institute) in Budapest. I don't know how the process really went, but it was surprising that he was turned down by the Macedonian Soros, as I believe he was probably the only Roma applying for a scholarship.

by pavlovska (transbluency(at)mailcity.com) on Thu Apr 20th, 2006 at 02:53:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Bulgarian Gypsies (Counter Argument)! | 176 comments (176 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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