OUR ACTIVITIES

Our main activities are connected to education, human rights and awareness-raising on political participation and discrimination within Macedonian society.

We are currently involved in projects that:

• Inform Romani children and parents about the importance of education. Because Romani children are often obliged to contribute to the family income as early as possible, AMBRELA’s activities aim to help parents to understand that child labour impairs childrens’ future chances.

• Support Romani children in overcoming educational disadvantages. Children growing up in more or less closed Romani communities generally have a very weak command of the Macedonian language when they enter school. For this reason, our work focuses on teaching the Macedonian language to preschool children and helping pupils in primary education to complete assignments.

Our previous and current activities and professional experiences include:

• Designing and conducting field research in the framework of Romani Expert Groups (in cooperation with the European Centre for Minority Issues)
• Peer mentoring and extracurricular activities (homework assistance)
• Computer and language skills development
• Romani mediators between education institutions and local Romani communities
• Awareness raising on human rights, discrimination and the position of Romani women
• Sport and culture activities
• Social work assistance

Some photos of our past and current activities with children and parents can be seen here.

Beyond our project activities, we see ourselves as an instrument of political change in order to fight against discrimination within the educational system. Among the most pressing issues in this area are:

• Sending Romani children to special schools rather than addressing their needs as bilinguals
• Depriving Romani parents of the right to freely choose the school their children attend
• Maintaining lower learning standards and inferior infrastructure in schools with a high proportion of Romani children