A scene from the last session with the entrepreneur Barbara Fortuna.

Within the international project Grundtvig Multilateral – Financial literacy for Roma (FINALLY: http://finally.splet.arnes.si/), which aims to improve financial literacy among Roma and their knowledge of various consumer services, RIC Novo mesto together with partners from other 5 countries has developed an educational program and special tools adapted to the specific needs of the Roma minority and focused on gaining new practical skills.

The training of teachers and trainers was implemented in May and lasted 24 hours. First group of Roma participants have finished their 56 hour program at the end of June. The project results and developed tools were tested by 19 Roma in the premises of CIK Trebnje, as the participants live in Trebnje Municipality. Program consists of 4 modules:

• Household Budgeting – Plan Ahead And Spend Wisely
• Saving For The Future
• Sensible Borrowing
• Increasing Your Income

This will improve their attitude towards money, efficiency in budget management, quality of life and trust in bank services. Besides RIC’s mentors the programme was enriched by the visit of bank employee and an entrepreneur. 17 participants have successfully finished the programme.

Awarding certificates to successful participants.

The programme and tools in all partner languages will be finished by the end of 2015. All activities of the project can be seen on the project website www.project-finally.eu.

The program can also be adapted, with minor adaptations, for training of other vulnerable groups both adults and children.

Within the topics save and borrow money we hosted a bank officer who has presented the possibilities of saving and borrowing money from the bank.

Using the simulations participants have learned about good shopping practices  and controlling spending, resolving situations of everyday life were taught through didactical game Romonopoly.

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Within 24 hours of training Financial Literacy for the Roma were trained 22 teachers and other professionals from different parts of Slovenia, of which 14 teachers and other pr

ofessionals from institutions of the Municipality of Novo mesto (primary schools, Center for social work, Adult education center, Red Cross), who will carry out the entire program or individual modules in the future. We provide the transfer of knowledge and materials to the widest possible range of performers. Evaluation of the program participants showed that materials with slightly modifications are also suitable for teaching other target groups.

In Italy about one-third of the Roma and Sinti population lives in settlements (Brunello 19963, Raxen 20094). The marginalization, social exclusion and bad housing situation within settlements are an important obstacle to their integration, affecting several dimensions of life, such as health, employment and education opportunities.
Given this context, a group of researchers organized a workshop in order to revitalize and deepen the political and cultural debate on housing policies for the Roma and Sinti by connecting policy-makers and their agenda with scholars and researchers working on the same topic. The debate was also inspired by presenting and discussing international case studies in where policy-makers, researchers and NGOs faced the same issues.
The meeting aimed at providing new theoretical insights and different points of view to Italian policy through linking international and national debate, researchers and policy-makers’ perspective. One of the parallel sessions discussed the situation of Bologna, one of the cities where the Finally research was carried out.  The workshop was funded by the Council of Europe.

Project partners prepared the materials for training tools at the meeting in Sofia. These will be used for training in field of financial literacy for Roma population. The whole team is preparing for the pilot action and is ensuring the participation of terrain workers and other professionals as trainers. We are also ensuring the participation of Roma, which will, under the pilot action, become familiar with the topics of financial literacy within 4 prepared modules. Team TRUNI also continues with dissemination activities. We have done an interview for the Roma internet radio – www.gipsy.sk, where we informed about project activities and training courses. We also informed about the training of trainers, to increase the participation of workers working with Roma. We provided a press release to Roma Media Centre in order to reach the greatest part of the Roma population and stakeholders.

Source of the photo: http://www.zadecu.org/vesti.php?id=268

These days the topic we are dealing with has again proven to be very important and relevant – other organizations are implementing activities in order to achieve the results similar to what we are aiming at in the Finally project.
Namely, the organization Obrazovanje plus (Education plus) from Belgrade, NGO with a rich background in the field, launched an important peer educational programme for financial literacy in April. The programme, Developing financial literacy among children through peer education in elementary schools, consists of several workshops for 7th grade pupils (13-14 years old). Through these workshops, pupils should develop skills related to efficient management of resources (i.e. time and money) and learn about activism, voluntarism, entrepreneurship and similar topics. After the training, they will share this knowledge with younger children – 3rd graders (9-10 years old). Teachers and parents are also included as beneficiaries of this project. For them, the programme leaders plan a lecture on importance of financial literacy, its development and position in educational systems. The aim is to raise their awareness of the possibilities for helping the children to obtain good habits related to managing finances.
The ideas behind this project are similar as in our project Finally. In order to make financial management in the family the most efficient, all family members should be included in the decision making – younger and elderly – and the good habits should be transferred from one generation to the other.

Bulgarian team from Health and Social Development Foundation (HESED) is very proud to announce that the project we are implementing in Kyustendil, Bulgaria, together with the Know-how Centre has been awarded with the Project of the Year 2014 award from the Tulip Foundation.
The project titled “Suspending the Process of Marginalization of the Roma in the City of Kyustendil, Bulgaria through creating a Model for Community Development” represents our long-standing efforts to develop a successful model for Roma integration. Our vision is that this is not just a single project but a model that can get replicated across the country and this award makes us even more confident that this is possible.Bulgarian team from Health and Social Development Foundation (HESED) is very proud to announce that the project we are implementing in Kyustendil, Bulgaria, together with the Know-how Centre has been awarded with the Project of the Year 2014 award from the Tulip Foundation.
The project titled “Suspending the Process of Marginalization of the Roma in the City of Kyustendil, Bulgaria through creating a Model for Community Development” represents our long-standing efforts to develop a successful model for Roma integration. Our vision is that this is not just a single project but a model that can get replicated across the country and this award makes us even more confident that this is possible.

RIC Novo mesto is engaged in activities for better Roma inclusion for many years. We are working closely with a variety of experts, organizations and the municipalities in region. Moreover, the Roma from the local environment are not included in our activities as participants but also s our colleges, co-workers and partners.  Because of the importance of cross-sectorial and regional cooperation in field of Roma integration on the 16^th of April RIC Novo mesto hosted  experts from municipalities, schools, labour offices, prisons, social work centres, libraries, NGOs, adult education organisation, invitation also representative of the Roma community.

We’ve carried out the event by the method of world cafe. In the beginning project coordinators presented  four RIC Novo mesto’s current projects, two Grundtvig Multilateral project, FINALLY – Financial literacy for Roma and e-RR (e-Roma Resource) and Daphne, Early marriage – culture or abuse and the project of the Norwegian Financial Mechanism SORO (Cooperation for the health of the Roma).  In addition of the world cafe event all the participants searched and discussed opportunities for concrete cooperation and activities that will increase and influence processes of integration of Roma population.

The event was very valuable contribution to FINALLY project. We presented the Finally training course programme and pilot actions which will start in May 2015.  The participants gave us valuable feedback in the form of concrete needs for their organizations. At the end of very creative debates with the beneficiaries we outlined and determined concrete exploitation activities and thus improved the expected participation in the pilot actions.

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Exchanging good European practices and becoming a part of the wide European network

RIC Novo mesto took part in a high-level, trans-national policy seminar as part of the EU-funded (LLP, Roma Policy) project ‘Literacy Cubed – Focus on Roma Families (LIT3)’ (www.lit3-project.eu) which was held in London on the 19th and 20th February 2015 at the University College London – Institute of Education. The participants were policy makers from Europe and from the national project’ partners as well as representatives from the other successful LLP projects. The purpose of the seminar was to consider and build on the messages from the first draft of the Policy Brief (following successful implementation of family literacy programmes with Roma families in Romania, Montenegro and Slovakia), informing its development, to ensure that it is aligned with other national and international policy developments and is of relevance to a broad range of policy areas.

Gabi Ogulin Počrvina, representative from RIC Novo mesto, presented good practices in working with Roma, focused on two current LLP projects: project Finally (to raise the financial literacy of Roma Adults) and project eRR (E-Roma Resource – implementation of online educational and informational platform). As RIC is an adult education center our major goal is to enable Roma acquiring basic literacy knowledge and skills. Those opportunity was well for improving  our work, exchanging good European practices and becoming a part of the wide European network in the field of Roma education.

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In the period from 26 to 28 January in Downtown hotel, Sofia, HESED hosted a meeting of the partners under “Finally- Financial Literacy for the Roma”, co-funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union. Representatives from five partners organizations from Slovenia, Slovakia, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria participated in the meeting. The training methodology for financial literacy of Roma developed by leading specialists in the field of finances from the Faculty of Economics of Nis (Serbia) was discussed and finalized. The methodology is based on a needs assessment research performed in each one of the countries included in the project (including Italy) The main finding of the needs assessment shows that even if most of Roma have to deal with irregular income they have developed successful coping strategies, but in some particular cases, related with their traditional lifestyle and values (such as family festive occasions particularly weddings) they tend to have irrational expenses. The training aims to develop skills in management of family budget, controlled spending, saving, opportunities for development of small business and entrepreneurship.

In the frame of the meeting the partners discussed and scheduled the upcoming piloting of the training activities in real training situation. The pilot actions are about to start at April 2015.

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