Our mission is education and development of people, organizations and communities towards civil society and sustainable development. We accompany from cradle to career, we bridge communities and we educate in understanding generational poverty, together we create comprehensive solutions that help individuals and families on the way from poverty to self-sufficiency. ETP Slovakia (ETP), a non-profit, non-governmental organization, works predominantly in marginalized Roma communities, where we offer comprehensive social and educational services in the safe premises of ETP community centres to Roma people, born to generational poverty. Currently, we are working in community centres in 2 localities and we are implementing other projects in 30 more municipalities.
ETP Slovakia was part of the second Summer Workshop Camp, which took place from August 3 to August 8 in Warsaw. The summer workshop camp was organized by Fundacja Dom Kultury in cooperation with the organizations: Vzájemné soužití ops from the Czech Republic and Amrita OBK from the Hungary. The second year of the summer workshop camp was mainly dedicated to developing the social skills of Roma youth, and at the same time focused on strengthening cooperation between non-governmental organizations from the Visegrad countries.
The first days were designed in the spirit of getting to know each other between the youth and individual organizations from the countries belonging to the Visegrad Countries. Each organization led a part of the program and presented what it did in the given region, what activities it organized for children and youth and how it worked with the Roma community. Then each country held a social skills workshop or games. As part of the program, we had a planned tour of Warsaw with a guide in our native language. And to not only learn, one afternoon we had fun again with sports games. According to the youth, the evenings were incredibly fun because our partners prepared very good activities and main entertainment. As part of the program, we also visited the Copernicus Science Center, where we had the opportunity to get to know artificial intelligence up close and, of course, many other things. We devoted one afternoon to creative work, we also participated in a workshop focused on making bags. On the fifth day, we had a debate with Agnieszka Caban. The aim of the debate was to find out the opinions of the youth on issues such as:
What do you think is important for Roma youth in your countries (family, career, life in harmony with society as a whole, safety)?
What do you think is the modern Roma identity? Do Roma feel part of Europe? Do other Europeans treat them appropriately?
What elements of Roma tradition do you think are the most valuable, from which non-Roma people can benefit?
What goals do you think the Roma youth have?
Do you think that the politicians in your countries adequately solve the problems of the Roma minority?
What are the biggest barriers faced by Roma youth in your countries?
What opportunities can the Roma minority take advantage of, who do you think helps them?
Has the image of the Roma minority in Europe changed in recent years?
What similarities do you see between Roma youth from other V4 countries and Roma youth in your country?
What dreams and plans do you have for the future?
It was felt from the debate that the youth from each country of the Visegrad Countries are interested in the image of the Roma in Europe. Some even see their professional activity in working with the Roma community in their countries. Whether as teachers, police officers, social workers, or even politicians.
Nice friendships were formed between the young participants from the member countries of the Visegrad Countries. It was rewarding for the youth from Slovakia that they could meet and get to know new people again. After returning home, we see that young people from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are still in contact. They are looking forward to other joint projects and events that we will organize in the future. Together with our partner organization Fundacja Dom Kultury, we launched two smaller projects through Erasmus+. We at ETP Slovakia believe that the Summer workshop camp will be a tradition for several more years, because it enriches not only our youth, but also us as an organization.
Dávid Korčkovský
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Dávid Korčkovský studied social work at the Catholic University in Ružomberok. Already during his studies, he was a tutor and mentor when working with Roma youth. He works for the non-profit organization ETP Slovakia as a professional manager of the Community Center in Podsadek in Stara Ľubovna and deputy director of ETP Slovakia. He is the co-founder of the online mentoring project Schopné deti.
