Study trip to Slovakia

At the end of November, we took part in a two-day study trip to Eastern Slovakia, where we visited NGOs working in segregated Roma communities living in deep poverty, as part of the Early Years Matter Program.

On the first day, we travelled to Ránk with representatives of NGOs from Northern Hungary to learn about the housing programme of the Association for a Better Life, supported by a Slovak bank and private donors. The people living there build their houses with interest-free micro-loans, on condition that they save for a year before taking out the loan. The houses, which are completely legal and built by a team of workers employed by the municipality and the owners of the houses. The association's staff and other professionals help and supervise the work and mentor the families. The association is present in several local communities and focuses on children and their parents. They help Roma families through tutoring and parenting programmes with the help of local professionals, and local women carry out early childhood development.

The Roma Institute community centre in the Brickworks area of Presov has been working directly with the Roma community for 21 years with the help of 3 mentors. The main goal of their work is to enrol children in kindergartens and primary schools and help them in the educational process with various tutoring and recreational activities.

ETP Slovakia has been working for many years in the Lunik IX municipality of Košice (and three others nearby), where they use the Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment Method, adapted by ETP Slovakia, to develop children. There is also a housing support programme, where the association's staff and other professionals assist and supervise the work and mentor the families. We also saw good examples of effective cooperation between the municipality and NGOs.

We thank the host organisations and our sister organisation Karpatska nadácia for their cooperation.