Project: Roma in Serbia: How safe they feel and do they see improvements?

18Feb2014

Since 2006, UNDP has been supporting establishment of positions of Roma coordinators in Serbian municipalities. This resulted in creation of a network of 47 municipal Roma coordinators at local level, hired as full time staff in local self-governments, working on temporary contracts or as volunteers. Roma Coordinators bridge the communication between local authorities and Roma communities and are part of the local administration structure. Majority of municipalities where Roma Coordinators are working, have prepared local action plans for Roma inclusion and most of them are now facing different challenges in the implementation phase.

»Supporting and developing capacities of Roma Coordinators in Serbia« seminar was organized from 18th to 21st February in Kragujevac. 43 Roma Coordinators from various municipalities in Serbia were supported to:

- Collect and use a real time “stories” for monitoring and reporting. Roma Coordinators practiced story capturing techniques on several localities.

- Learn about budgeting process and the budget of the local self-governments

- Learn more about protection of women from domestic violence 

- Exchanged experience on local action plans implementation

- Establish the Association of Roma Coordinators in Serbia. 

Seminar was organized as a part of UNDP’s “Regional support facility for improving the capacity to make real progress on Roma inclusion“project. The project supports data collection at the local level to take stock of changes in the position of Roma, monitors the magnitude of ethnic distance between Roma and non-Roma, identifies problems that need to be urgently addressed and collects ideas from the people on how to improve the situation.