Roma students enrolled in medical and other healthcare programs in various Bulgarian schools will volunteer as part of the Mentorship Support For the Next Generation of Roma Health Professionals project. The project is managed by the Trust for Social Achievement and the idea behind it is for participating students to develop and implement an initiative or campaign in a specific Roma community to raise the people’s awareness of high-burden diseases.
Today some of the students attended a meeting within the second component of the program, which was devoted to the development of health initiatives in Roma communities. The participating students had a chance to get to know each other through various role-playing games and to meet TSA’s chief executive officer, Sarah Perrine.
The program’s first component was issuing scholarships for Roma university students enrolled in healthcare programs, in the course of an academic year. The full run of the program is 6 years. The project’s goal is to build role models in order to raise awareness of health issues in the Roma community.