Roma Education Fund Romania Foundation celebrated its 10th anniversary on October 9th, and their jubilee was attended by the President of Romania, Mr. Klaus Iohannis. On this occasion, the Romanian Head of State visited Gymnasium School no. 1 and the kindergarten in Gălbinaşi, Călărași county, together with officials of Roma Education Fund, with beneficiaries and partners of the foundation. The school and the kindergarten in that village are among the first partners taken aboard by REF Romania for educational programs aimed at Roma children.
The President of Romania, Mr. Klaus Iohannis, started his visit at the kindergarten in Gălbinași. The premises of that kindergarten count among the 11 school buildings refurbished or built by REF Romania as part of the project named “Ready Set Go!”. The project received funding of 2.7 million euros from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism. As a result of this project, REF Romania managed to raise the quality of early education services for 570 Roma children from 11 disadvantaged communities.
President Klaus Iohannis was welcomed on the doorstep of the kindergarten by Claudia Lixandru, national director of REF Romania, by Andrzej Mirga, president of Roma Education Fund and by Tatiana Proskuryakova, country manager for Romania and Hungary from the World Bank. They were joined in welcoming the head of state by the director of the Secondary School, Angelica Olmazu, together with the mayor of the Gălbinaşi commune, Mr. Paul Radu.
The Romanian President congratulated the REF Romania team on its outstanding results for the first ten years of activity.
“After 10 years of activity, the impact of genuine involvement in these communities, in the lives of these people, through improving the quality of the education services received, comes forth. Starting with 2018, we added a new chapter in our strategy: employability / preparing the pupils we supported through our educational programs to enter the labor market. Eventually, this is the end result of everything we do. Of course, some of our projects will continue to address school dropout and Teacher training. We will develop, as until now, best practices models to contribute to educational public policies”. – Claudia Lixandru, National Director of Roma Education Fund Romania.
The visit of President Klaus Iohannis continued at the Nr. 1 Secondary School of the same village. There, the students had prepared for this occasion a mini-exhibition of handmade artwork created by them and themed around the season of ripe fruit and schoolbags ready for class. The Gălbinași School is involved with 30 of it teachers in one of the projects currently carried out by REF Romania, the program “Competence, innovation and professionalism in education”. This project is co-financed from the European Social Fund through the Human Capital Operational Program 2014-2020.
Founded in 2009 by the Roma Education Fund in Switzerland, the Roma Education Fund (REF) Romania is a non-governmental organization dedicated to closing the gap in educational outcomes between Roma and non-Roma. Since then, the Roma Education Fund Romania has been implementing and promoting educational projects and activities focused on the development, modernization and efficient carrying out of the state’s educational policy. REF Romania has thus become an important factor in the field of Roma education in Romania and aims to develop a constructive dialogue and cooperation with stakeholders and with relevant state institutions in the field of education, both at the central and on the local levels.
The major achievement of the Foundation is the implementation of five strategic projects. These programmes received funding from the EU through the ESF fund and from the EEA & Norway Grants, and also through the contribution of other three major projects financed by the EU. All these projects targeted more than 24 000 Roma pupils and adults, with complex service packages, as part of several multi-annual interventions. The total budget raised over these years, from third party donors, exceeded EUR 23 mil (ESF funds – 15,5 mil EUR, and EEA grants – 8,2 mil EUR). REF Romania is dedicated to its mission to establish and to promote best practices and to further scale-up of the implementation of large EU/EEA grants in Romania, based on its experiences and capacities gained from the implementation of large EU/EEA funded projects. As part of REF Network, REF Romania is able to finance and to manage vast projects, in partnership with local Roma NGOs, thus contributing to the development and the empowerment of Roma civil society organizations in Romania.
