Projects / Rom-UP! The inclusion of Roma through quality successful educational experiences

ROM-UP! is financed with the support of the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme over a period of one year, from April 2012 until March 2013. The project is a partnership between eight European partners.

The main goal of ROM-UP! is to create an International Romani Network aimed at raising awareness of the successful educational experiences that have already been scientifically proven to be effective in the promotion of the social integration of Roma children and all the students in general, in terms of pursuing educational success.

The specific objectives of the project are:

• Disseminate successful educational experiences in promoting Roma education;
• Develop strategies to carry out successful actions in the participating countries (Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Ireland);
• Involve Roma in the selection of good educational practices carried out in their communities;
• Establish networks of coordination between the coordination, Roma communities and education agents in order to overcome Roma educational exclusion.

ROM-UP! project will contribute to achieve the main goals expressed in the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020, offering explicit, detailed and concrete successful educational measures in the education area to be transferred and implemented in different European contexts.This will involve a tangible improvement of Roma people's life conditions, specially, the most vulnerable. The project will offer concrete successful measures in order to ensure that all Roma children have access to quality education, ensuring primary school completion, reducing the number of early school leavers and promoting the access to the tertiary education.

The main innovating elements of the project are:

1) Romani network. All actors involved in the Roma educational success will be included in the network. The network will make possible the transfer of knowledge regarding the successful educational experiences in Europe, which in turn will raise awareness and stronger commitment of all the relevant agents. This will be ensured by specific activities along the project.

2) Its approach: by changing from best to successful experiences as recommended in the Includ-ed project, ROM-UP! will overcome the limitation of previous compilations which neither have evaluated the impact of the experiences proposed by them, nor have assured their success and transferability to other contexts. This change means a focus on those educational experiences scientifically proven to be successful (always and in all contexts). Additionally, such educational experiences have obtained successful results, are based on the international scientific community recommendations, and their implementation has been done through the dialogue and agreement with Roma community members. The ROM-UP! guide will inform about how to transfer them to other contexts.

3) Roma direct participation in all the relevant phases of the project including the direct voices in the main outputs.

4) The direct connection with international scientific community recommendations and INCLUD-ED contributions.

• Roma children and young people;
• Organisations, institutions and other entities working with Roma children;
• Roma grass roots community;
• Teaching staff, local organisations, associations, public authorities and NGOs sensible to the subject of Roma social and economic inclusion and access to education;
• Organisations working with children from a disadvantaged backgrounds (immigrants, people with disabilities, etc.).

• Electronic guide “ROM UP! The successful inclusion of Roma through educational experiences” with successful educational experiences selected and recommendations on how to transfer them to other European countries;
• Romani network "International Romani network" formed by Roma activists, non-academic and Romani grassroots people, researchers, educative actors, teachers, professionals, school/cultural mediators, civil and Roma NGOs, European, national and local authorities, politicians and all relevant agents who are working to achieve Roma integration in mainstream society;
• European Report “Successful educational experiences promoting the integration of Roma in and through education”;
• European Report “The voices of the community. Actors involved in successful educational experiences promoting the integration of Roma in and through education”;
• 4 national seminars (Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Ireland);
• ROM-UP! Final Conference in Barcelona;
• 6 newsletters;
• Project website, available in 6 languages, which will disseminate the main results.

The quality of the project, both in terms of its development and final products, will be ensured by partner CREA UB. There are two external committees coordinated by CREA UB that will ensure the quality of the project. These are:

Quality Evaluation Group: composed by four non-academic Roma, two teachers and two researchers from CREA UB as advisories. Their main function is to evaluate the successful educational experiences received and to choose which of them will be selected for dissemination. List of members

European Advisory Council: composed by five European experts - Roma organisations representatives and activists - in the field of the project and renowned for their contribution on it. They will have an active role throughout the consortium, the National Working Groups, national seminars and the final conference. Their main function is to collect and evaluate the successful educational experiences received and to choose which of them will be selected for dissemination.