The objective of the project was to sustainably strengthen the professional, methodological, and organisational competences of the participating young professionals and organisations. Through transnational exchange and joint learning processes, participants were enabled to carry out their work in a more confident, reflective, and effective manner. Another key objective was to strengthen self‑efficacy and personal responsibility among the participants. They were expected to learn how to develop their own project ideas, plan them realistically, and, in the long term, apply independently for funding. This also included gaining a better understanding of project logic, budget structures, and the requirements of European funding programmes. Furthermore, the project aimed to make Romani language, cultural heritage, and identity visible as cross‑cutting themes and to anchor them professionally within the project context. Participants were empowered to integrate these topics in a reflective way into their educational, youth, and community work, and to use them as resources for empowerment and participation.
We applied for the Triangular project because we identified a clear need for structured professionalisation, international exchange, and systematic knowledge transfer between organisations working with Roma communities in different European contexts. The partner organisations from Germany, Romania, and Bulgaria have many years of practical experience, but operate under very different political, social, and institutional conditions. The aim was therefore to bring these experiences together in a transnational framework and make them mutually beneficial. A key concern was to strengthen young Roma professionals and young professionals in their professional roles. Many of them are already active in education, youth work, or community‑based contexts, but have very limited access to international networking, European project work, and funding programmes such as Erasmus+. In particular, project development and application procedures represented major challenges. In addition, there was a strong need for practice‑oriented exchange on proven approaches in community‑based youth work, educational and mentoring models, and cultural education, in order to further develop these approaches jointly and make them transferable to other contexts.