Center Amalipe organized a training for field workers from Belgium

Training of field workers from Belgium how to work in Roma community was carried out on October 20. More than 40 social workers, teachers, intercultural mediators and educational mediators from Belgium and Bulgaria took part in it. The training was organized online by Center Amalipe in partnership with the Belgian organization Foyer within the frames on No Segregation project.
The participants discussed the main problems social workers/ mediators and teachers face in their work with Bulgarian Roma who lived in Belgium and how these challenges could be overcome. Mr. Koen Geurts shared that many Bulgarian Roma lived in Brussels and meet challenges regarding employment, housing and education. Most of them prefer not to declare themselves as Roma and most probably they are from the Millet group, i.e. Turkish speaking Roma Muslims. Social workers and teachers from different regions in Belgium also shared the challenges in interacting with Bulgarian and Romanian Roma.
Deyan Kolev from Center Amalipe explained more about the differences among Roma groups in Bulgaria, their patterns of migrations, the informal authorities in different groups and how the field workers can interact with them. He pointed as good examples the network of educational mediators in Bulgaria and their work for raising the level of education in Roma community.
Boyan Zahariev from Open Society Institute – Sofia gave practical advises about interaction of Roma migrants in Belgium, Spain, Germany and other western EU countries. He answered to many questions of the participants.

No Segregation project was implemented in Bulgarian, Spain and Belgium in the period November 2019 – October 2022. The project was financed by REC program of DG Justice. More about the project and its outcome see here.

You can download the video from the meeting here