Empowerment of Roma women and prevention of early marriages

One of the major goals of Center Amalipe is providing equal chances for Romani women and fostering their active participation in public and political life. We work in several directions for achieving this goal:

  1. Including Roma women’s issues into the common agenda and promoting activities aimed at activating Roma women. One of these activities is to activate women from small (rural) communities. In this regard, the Amalipe Center has successfully used the opportunity offered by the National Program “From Social Assistance to Employment” for the appointment of Roma women to the position of mediator in the Roma community. The post is opened to the relevant mayor / municipality. Not only does it provide a link between the community and the institutions, but it also helps to elevate and uphold the authority of the woman concerned, both within her own community and among the institutions. This inevitably leads to a change and break of the stereotypical perception of the role of the Roma woman.In 2006 and 2007, the organization supported the work of the Labor Office Directorate – Veliko Tarnovo and Gorna Oryahovitsa for organizing literacy courses for older Roma. Mainly women take part in the courses. One of the goals pursued by this activity is not only to give a certain form of literacy, but also to break the closed family circle in which women are found and to increase their motivation and desire to participate.
  2. The Amalipe Center pays particular attention to its monitoring and evaluation reports on the different policies, whether they consider the gender aspect and what their impact is on the role and status of the Roma woman. In 2007, the organization conducted a detailed survey on the social, educational, health status of the Roma woman as well as her social activity.
  3. Since 2005, the Amalipe Center has been a member of the Bulgarian Platform for the European Women’s Lobby.
  4. Since 2006 Teodora Krumova has been the national coordinator of the Joint Romani Women Initiative of the Open Society Institute – Budapest. The main objectives of the network are to include the problems of Roma women in the general agenda of the non-governmental sector and public institutions, to monitor existing policies, programs and projects, to empower and build capacity