Families . . . Basic for Education

This European initiative for basic education of Roma is aimed at Roma adults and families (for inter-generational learning). It consists of manuals in the different national languages of a number of countries, that will assist those who want to help Roma people learn to read and write.

The presentation of the handbook/manual for Romania will take place on May 10 in Targu Mures.


https://ec.europa.eu/epale/en/blog/bera-basic-education-roma-adults

Resource for helping adults stumulate children's learning

World Vision has very useful resources for helping adults to stimulate the learning of children in their own community.

TOOLKIT for ECCD: Early Childhood Care and Development
Very simple materials introduce a wide range of parenting topics for discussion in a community setting. ECCD materials build on local knowledge and practices already in communities. This opens the door for other initiatives like health, nutrition, community development . . .. The kit includes:

1. Step by step instructions to make Children's Toys for different age groups with simple, inexpensive materials;
2. User's guide;
3. Facilitator's guide with lesson plans for 72 parent meetings;
4. Videos to illustrate and train; the 7 minute video ‘Parenting Boys and Girls’ gives an introduction to the whole concept of ECCD and to the Toolkit; (the video, with appropriate language added, could be used to advocate for this in a community)
5. Flashcards to be used in the 72 parent meetings. 

You can easily expand and adapt these tools for local use depending on your context. View, download, and try them!

BASIC EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT:
On this website, under Education, there are also useful helps for those helping older children succeed in school. Topics covered include After School Homework Clubs and in one-on-one interactions.
Community options to improve learning provides (basic education improvement) plans that can empower communities and other key stakeholders to plan, partner, monitor, advocate, and act together to help children improve in reading, math and life skills. There are ideas for parents who read and parents who don’t read; ideas for children who read and children who don’t read yet.

Let us know your experiences with any of these programs--or suggestions for other ones you have used!


Educational Observation, July 2017, M. Fast

Parents and Children Learn Together

Did your mom read to you? Did she show you how to work puzzles? Did she give you crayons and coloring books? Did she play games with you?
Let's back up a step--did she have puzzles to show, crayons to give, or books to read? These moms don't. But they can teach their children all those literacy-related things through a Parent-Child Club. 
 

What is the Parent-Child Club?
Fun activities that help children learn. Young children participate together with an older person from their family. This person could be a mother, grandma, an aunt, a sister or a father, uncle, brother or grandfather.

Why use the child’s first language as much as possible? 
Children learn best in their own language, partly because they feel more at ease when their own language is spoken. Also, it improves a person’s sense of self-worth when their language is considered important enough to be used in activities like this.



These photos are from the first field trial. We would like to do at least two more this coming year. Interested in helping? Or leading one yourself? Let us know! 
Activities: available at Davar Parent-Child Club.

Qualirom = Quality Education for Romani in Europe

Summarized from Qualirom Website.

Information available on website in Czech, English, Finnish, German, Serbian, and Slovak.

QUALIROM developed teaching materials in various Romani varieties for primary, secondary and tertiary teaching at proficiency levels A1 to B2. Some of the materials were piloted in teaching activities during the lifetime of the project. Downloadable materials are listed below under the respective Romani variety:

• ARLIJE ROMANI, a vital dialect cluster from mainly south eastern Europe with groups of migrant speakers in all European countries and beyond.
• EAST SLOVAK ROMANI, an inter-regional variety with speech communities in Slovakia (SK) and in the Czech Republic (CZ) and with migrant speakers in many other EU countries. 
• FINNISH ROMANI, an isolated variety whose speech community is currently undergoing a language shift with elders still perceiving their "language" as a tabooed in-group marker but, on the other hand, want their children to be taught the ethnic language. 
• GURBET ROMANI, a dialect cluster that reaches from Macedonia via Bosnia-Herzegovina to Serbia and Croatia with speech communities all over Europe and beyond and with written varieties in use for some decades.
• LOVARA ROMANI, an internationally spread variety from the wider Hungarian context; it is an integral part of Romanšago 'Romaniness' and is used in the media, in political contexts and in inter-group contacts. 
• KALDERAŠ ROMANI, an internationally spread variety with speech communities all over Europe (and beyond) since the beginning of the 20th century, is perhaps the most important variety of the Romani political movement on the international level; it is the prime basis of an emerging "Inter-Roman". 

Roma parents help tutor children

Sixty percent of Slovakia’s children classified as “mentally disabled” are Roma. Most just don’t know Slovak well enough to be classified as “standard.” Given this situation, and the need of several church members for work, we took four days of the February 2016 school break week to help ten of the church’s Roma children in grades 0 – 4 improve their Slovak reading and writing skills. Three parents plus my children (aged 12 and 15) taught grade-appropriate materials. The parents did not receive “pay” for teaching, rather a “reward” at the end of the week approximately equal to what they would have received had they been selected for extra community service work (about 1 euro an hour).

We met at the Hlinné Cirkev bratská church. The children wanted to come, even though we had no candy – only a healthy snack during ten minutes of the three hour daily
tutoring sessions. In fact, more children asked to come than those who were registered. The parents explained the lessons to the younger children using Romani. Progress was made by up to 21 words per minute faster reading speed of an unknown text. Now we are considering ways to continue.

Lisa van Vuuren, April 12, 2016