The Romany Early Years Network (REYN) coordinate in Bulgaria by the Foundation "Trust for Social achievement". The network serves the specialists in the field of early childhood development working with Roma children and assisted raising the quality of services for children at an early age from the Roma community in Bulgaria.
REYN Network in Bulgaria is working in the direction for increasing the motivation and knowledge of specialists, which provide services in the field of early childhood development. One of the main priorities of the job is to put an emphasis on the link between the quality of lifelong learning and the feeding of children from the Roma community.
The main goals of the REYN in Bulgaria
- To develop expert capacity among Roma and Non Roma specialists who work in the field of early childhood development with the Roma communities and to provide opportunities for professional development, exchange of specialists and support staff actively participating in the provision of services for children in early age
- To increase the number of specialists and auxiliary staff from the Roma community working for the provision of services in early childhood through support of their learning and training
- To increase awareness of the status of the services offered at an early age for children from the Roma community, with the aim of ensuring a fair and quality services to assist in creating a more inclusive systems
- To provide additional opportunities for service of students of Roma origin, which will lead to an increase in the support for the approach "role models in early age"
Through the achievement of these objectives, the network for early childhood development in the Roma community in Bulgaria will build credibility in different sectors. This will assist the process of unification of the experts who work on issues related to the early development of children from the Roma community
Resources
The Romani Early Years Network is bringing international knowledge and learning to Bulgaria, by translating and summarizing selected materials from conferences and seminars in the filed of Early Childhood Development.
How Does Povery Affect Children?
Published by REYN Croatia. In this publication, REYN Croatia shows how poverty affects Romani children and how it generates a vicious circle that is hard to break. Poverty leads to socio-emotional and cognitive disadvantages, low school attendance, school drop out, all that leads to unemployment and, again, poverty. Quality education can break this cycle. Poor educational achievement of disadvantaged children is a consequence of the conditions they grow up in; and not a consequence of their actual cognitive capacities. Cognitive capacity, just like intelligence, is variable. Whether it increases or decreases, it depends on our approach to children.
Can You Hear Me?
Romani language/romani ćhib [t∫ib] and Bayash Romanian/ljimba d’bjash [lyimba dbya∫] are the two languages spoken by most of the Romani people in Croatia. Beside these two, the Romani in Croatia speak other languages – some Romani people speak Wallachian, Albanian or Macedonian as their first language.
A Teacher
This is the story of Vesna, a Croatian teacher in pre-primary school. Vesna’s first goal is to teach her pupils how to create a community. Why a community? They will be soon part of the society and they have to learn how to contribute to a community. Cooperative learning, work groups and games increase in pupils the feeling to be part of a community and they learn how to solve problems and conflicts in a peaceful way. Parents are important as well. Workshops for parents are held in the school in order to improve their sense of community. In this workshops parents can learn basic knowledge in order to hep their children in doing homeworks. Vesna’s approach includes on incentives, praises and rewards.