„…They steel like ravens, are afraid of hard work and peoples of restless nomads…“ – if it comes to „gypsies“, we are quick with prejudices. Even more problematic is the fact that they can be mobilised any time what is proven by regular riots and their actual living conditions in a very sad way. Without a doubt – and that was not only confirmed by the last EU Roma Summit – „… the integration of Roma is in progress all over Europe. More Roma children attend a primary school; there are more supporting programmes for Roma who need a job, a flat or access to health care.” Despite of the achieved progress, that are in a major part due to the “EU Framework for National Strategies for the Integration of Roma until 2020”, they are still the poorest, the most concerned by unemployment, the least educated, the shortest living and the most arrested Europeans. A relevant reason for the permanent discrimination of Roma is their low education level. A participation of Roma in education is clearly reducing after the compulsory education. Their unemployment rate is in average 70 per cent. The rate of women is even higher. Another big obstacle for the Roma’s access to education and employment is that they are not aware of their own talents, skills and competences. Furthermore, the majority of them is not really involved in professional orientation and career planning. On the other hand, we know that education and employment is the key to social integration. For the economic development of a country, the Roma are indispensable as employees in general and particularly as skilled workers. The first aim of “pROceed” is to identify European best practise for professional orientation, career guidance and job preparation which can be adapted both for concrete requirements of vocational education and the labour market and the specific needs of the target group in the partner countries. Secondly, the partners will initiate a dialogue with relevant stakeholders from the according fields who will – as the third step – develop concepts for follow-up projects together. The 18 months project will be realised by partner organisations from Slovakia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania and Serbia.
Project pROceed achievements were obtained at several levels. Firstly, the partners researched the situation and the needs of target group and stakeholders towards the instruments of career guidance, professional orientation and job preparation and further education. These were done through dedicated surveys with Roma and individual discussions with stakeholders. The project discovered the need of the target group for better professional orientation already in the elementary schools and high-schools, which should be locally based, comprehensive and focused on promoting self-awareness of young and adult Roma. Additionally, the lack of suitable career guidance instruments for Roma was discovered. The most beneficial instrument, based on the responses of the target group and stakeholders, is the job preparation and further education, which should be provided with respect to the background of Roma and their special needs and should be provided with respect to the actual needs of the local labour market in order to ensure successful employment. The project consortium developed an application of the follow-up project which will take these outcomes and focus on implementing them in praxis of the partner countries.
The project itself addressed the need of social inclusion of Roma by enhancing and enabling their labour market participation rate. This was primarily done by elaborating three key instruments - Career guidance, Professional Orientation and Job preparation and further vocational education. These are the well-tested instruments designed to allow more individuals to successfully enter the labour market, however their success rate may fall short in case of Roma minority. It was the presumption of the partnership, that this is due to the special needs of the Roma community not being addressed by general procedures of these instruments. By extension, the project addressed the issue of lack of skilled labour force across European countries, while Roma communities representing substantial parts of the population across EU are still under-participating in the Labour force. The impulse for application was the opportunity to build the partnership of well experienced organizations covering the three bases of career guidance, professional orientation and job preparation and further education, as well as experience with dealing with Roma and geographical representation of countries with high Roma populations, which had brought added value.