A Roma Women Empowerment Campaign in Bulgaria

The challenges:  Empowerment of (grassroots) Roma women  Raising the awareness about the Roma women place, realities and cases

...and even more challenging is that Roma are always perceived as collective image

Our goal is:  Roma women from 5 municipalities from two regions of Bulgaria who has already done differences in their lives to be able to address topics of their concerns, to advocate for these topics with public authorities and institutions and generate understanding, support and collaboration in their local societies

The issues that will be addressed during the campaign According to the women the main issue they are concerned about is the early dropping out from school of the Roma adolescents and especially of the girls

Campaign messages : “Mothers and fathers, our children need to have a childhood!” “Mothers, have bigger dreams for your daughters!” “We together can ensure all children to enjoy their childhood.”

Target audiences: From the Roma community: Roma parents, especially mothers and youths, especially the girls aged 12 – 16 Local /regional authorities, servants involved in the child protection services and teachers from 5 municipalities

The target audiences to realize their role as well as the necessity to improve their coordination for preventing dropping out of Roma children from school Local advocacy actions: working &official meetings, open letters, press conferences, round tables Increasing the capacity of the Roma women brokers - trainings and coaching at their localities Media coverage of the campaign Developing a special training trajectory Increasing the capacity of the outreach officers to communicate the messages of the women campaign in the internet community work: face to face discussions with mothers and young girls; door to door work with some families; peer to peer actions

Thank you !