A Roma organization is a group of Roma that have a dream, a common mission, aspiration,
and want to serve their community.
You cannot solve the problems of the Roma if you are an outsider. You are able to solve
the problems if you are coming from within the community. You know the problems that
they are facing.
A Roma organization that is successful has a lot of roots in the community.
In the beginning it was voluntary and very much based on implications and motivation.
But the model of international human rights organizations with well paid staff defending
the rights and documenting the rights and advocating for… the victims, we took this
model. We became human rights advocates, professional human rights advocates.
The Roma organization should be a bit more transparent, more accountable, more close
to the Roma communities because I believe somehow we lost the connections.
The very good part is that we have a huge number of middle class Roma defending the
rights. But for me the next step is, you know, to build a relationship with communities.
This is not because we don’t like to work with the Roma communities but it’s basically
because of donor/NGO relationship and project-based relationship. This really affects our work
and in order to fight for the rights of Roma, you instead become a bureaucracy and do papers.
We feel that the European Union and all the other actors have been throwing money at the
problem. That it was more about self-declaring that, yes we recognize this is a problem,
we invest funds, and that’s that.
It’s one thing to give money and create a relation of dependency between the donor
and the grantee. A nd the other thing is to see your grantee as a partner who is building
and developing something with you.
We can do only pilot projects. We cannot develop projects that are sustainable for… 10 years.
We are trying one year, two years, three years project and then, if it is not taken over
by the local or by the government, this is going to end. And then the decision maker
will say; “This is your fault, the fault of the NGO because you just, tried for a few
years. It worked or not. Maybe it worked, but you stopped.”
The national government will declare that we have invested millions and millions of
euros in the Roma integration but the Roma didn’t integrate. Leading to conclude that
the Roma simply don’t want to integrate.
When we’re talking about educational projects, where the impact is seen after a longer time,
the donors should support at least four or five years so the project can become sustainable.
Still in Romania we live in the 19th century. We do not have toilets in house. We do not
have infrastructure. We do not have water. But we are forced to build projects that deal
with new technologies or long life learning programs, you know, that are not quite adaptable
to the needs of the community.
They are trying to put their agenda in the NGOs and the NGOs are now in a very crisis
situation.
Too often in public policy consultations for example the Roma organizations serve much
more to legitimize the process instead of being the source of knowledge and expertise.
Most of the donors do not know the context in Romania, so its very hard to convince them
and they have to have opinions from all sides of the story. Also from the community. Also
from the organizations. Also from the institutions.
We should change our structure, our function and post all your accounts, all your bills
on the website. You have regular audits, you have budgets that are uploaded, so it should
be really transparent.
We are representing the Roma rights, the Roma community interests, and we must bring the
Roma within our governing body in order to have a transparent and an accountable, er,
process within the organization. The Roma must know what are we doing and that the things we are
doing is for them.
Even we were thinking of hiring restaurants where we can invite the community members
to attend a general assembly and see what we are discussing, how we are discussing,
and what we are thinking about the future so they can also interact
I think now the Roma organizations have to become something more. They have to take a
role of a space where the Roma can interact, where they can do a little bit of networking
among each other. And a place where they can gain hope. Where they see that when they work
together and when they unite, they can accomplish something big.
We should organize communities to vote for Roma, to elect themselves, to get power at
the local level, to become local council, to become mayor. This will be the change;
Roma to be involved not only in the civil society, but also in the political power,
especially at the local level where the decision is made for the budgets and for the strategies,
so the local community of Roma can benefit more.
I’m very hopeful these changes can happen for Roma organizations. I am doing this everyday,
so we’re not going to stop.