“Teachers and Student Volunteers for Better Educational Outcomes for Roma Children” project in Serbia helped 97% of the students-beneficiaries to complete the school year

The project “Teachers and Student Volunteers for Better Educational Outcomes for Roma Children”, funded by a grant of the Roma Education Fund and implemented by the Group for children and youth „Indigo” (Serbia) provides formal and non-formal individualized education support to Roma school children in grades 5 – 8 by school teachers and student volunteers; exchange of information, knowledge and experiences of the teachers and student volunteers in the provision of the formal and non-formal education support to the Roma children; and creation of a model for improving the professional competences for individualized educational support to Roma and other marginalized children in cooperation between primary, tertiary and non-formal education actors.

Volunteers helps Roma primary education students keep up with their school work

Photos from students’ outing in Sokobanja, Serbia

Indigo outreach workers encountered a positive immediate result of the intervention: “We evaluated the results of the project by comparing the children’s performance at the end of the last two school years. Before the start of the project, only 28 out of 39 children successfully completed the school year and transitioned to the next grade level (71%). One year later, 59 out of 61 children who participated in the project (97%) successfully completed their grades and 22 children improved their school performance when compared to the previous school year.”

 

Meet two volunteering girls, helping Roma children with their daily tasks- Katarina and Slavica:

In the video Katarina Mitrovic talks about what she has learnt while volunteering in the Community Centre, as part of the project “Teachers and student-volunteers for better educational outcomes of Roma children”, supported by Roma Education Fund (in Serbian language)

Slavica Ilić is a volunteer at the Community Centre of the Group for children and youth „Indigo” as part of the project “Teachers and student-volunteers for better educational outcomes of Roma children”, supported by Roma Education Fund. Slavica competently talks about the independent path of learning Roma children choose (including online studies) and the role of Roma mothers (in Serbian language).

You can read about the experiences of all Indigo volunteers in the internally-produced publication “Learning with Kids”: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AjucxMaKtIs1geUKEEod8qou6KNJVA?e=6cqdD1.