Since 2007, the Roma Education Fund has been running a Mentoring Program that has supported over 2,500 young Roma students in Serbia. The program has over 300 mentors who are professors, pedagogues, and psychologists. These mentors are employed in the schools that scholarship recipients attend. The goal of the program is to reduce the dropout rate among Roma high school students, and has been successful as the dropout rate has decreased from 7% to 2,4%.
“Being someone’s support in life is a very important thing, awakening someone’s security and carelessness is a great honour, directing someone’s thoughts towards a beautiful future is a great temptation, and all of these are the task of a mentor!”, Marina Jaćimović, mentor from the REF program.
Towards the end of 2023, after fifteen years of implementation of the mentorship program, REF has published an analysis of the mentorship support practice. Recommendations for the Institutionalization of the Mentorship Support Program – Contribution to Evidence based Policymaking – authored by Zdenka Milivojević was presented during a conference organized in Belgrade on 31st October 2023, as part of advocacy campaign for the implementation of REF’s Mentoring Program for Roma High School students at a national level.
The event was attended by Ciprian Necula, PhD and the president of the Roma Education Fund, Mr. Tomislav Žigmanov, the Minister for Human and Minority Rights and Social Dialogue, Ms. Slavica Đukić Dejanović, the Minister of Education, and Mr. Redjepali Chupi, the director of REF Serbia.
“The biggest challenge in mentoring is to generate the awareness and engagement of everyone – the community, but also the students and their families, environment/community the students come from – to understand that the regular school attendance of Roma children should not be seen as something unusual or exceptional, but as completely regular; it is a civic right of each individual to get education, to acquire knowledge and qualification (a degree), a degree that will ensure a tool for leading successful and productive life in the future”, Sanja Bajić, experienced professor of Serbian language and literature from Subotica, Serbia.
READ the document HERE
About the author
Zdenka Milivojević is a certified educator, Deputy Principal of a primary school, MA Educational policies, former Member of National education council of the Republic of Serbia, and an intercultural expert.
The Recommendations study is part of the project “Employment Empowerment of Young Roma – Phase Two”, implemented by the Roma Education Fund (REF) Serbia with the financial support of the German Financial Cooperation program implemented by the German Development Bank KfW on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Germany – the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
