Romodrom for Education
The Romodrom for Education project helped children living in socially excluded localities.
The Romodrom civic association reacts with its activities to the increasing needs of its clients and offers them a newly complex programme for the school success rate of their children. The Romodrom for Education programme, reg. no. CZ.1.07/1.2.00/14.0110 funded from the OPEC of the ESF and the state budget of the Czech Republic is being implemented from 1.4.2010 to 31.3.2013. The eligible expenditures of the project amount to 20 172 968,80 CZK. The goal of the project was to implement a complex programme for children and youth which reacts to their specific educational needs in the Olomouc and Moravian-Silesian Region and thus prevent them from prematurely leaving the educational system and allow them to return as well. The project´s key activities include tutoring (i.e. direct support of students by field teaching assistants – FTA), FTA work with the target group (mainly creating, controlling, evaluating the child´s educational plans, working with the child´s family, involving the child in peer motivational programmes etc.), peer motivation group (interactive work with children in age groups with topics associated with education and preparation for future life). Additionally, throughout the course of the project, professional literature will be published (methods of working with TG, standards, analysis of the needs of children from a different socio-cultural environment), and the FTA will be working with the family and close persons (complex cooperation with the child´s family, especially in supporting the child´s educational activities).
The project follows up on the Romodrom for the Regions programme. Field social workers of the Romodrom association operate in different socially excluded localities where they help their clients deal with their difficult life situation and help them find a way out of what is often a very hard life situation. They constantly encounter problems faced by children from these families, whether in terms of school attendance, but also insufficient preschool preparation. That is often also the cause of their inclusion into special schools. Since the parents are often dealing with several existential issues and lack the time to attend to their children´s regular school attendance, special workers will visit these localities as support and tend to the children in all areas concerning success at school.
„The project´s target group are children and youth at a school age of 7 to 18, living primarily in socially excluded Roma localities. The project also focuses on working with their parents and other close persons. A key innovation in the project was the implementation of a new position of field teaching assistant. The project also includes educational activities, creation and evaluation of professional methods, and the creation of a programme for working with a peer group. The project combines tried and tested measures and methods leading to achieving the project´s main goal, which was primarily the individual work with children and youth in their natural environment,“ says the head of the Romodrom for Education programme, Mgr. Petra Zahradníková.
The project aims to catch children and youth who are at risk of prematurely leaving the educational process and wishes to also offer help to those who have already prematurely left it. It aims to increase the children´s motivation to educate themselves in the form of individual cooperation with a field teaching assistant based on the child´s individual educational and motivational plan. The project currently employs 8 field teaching assistants and two regional coordinators, with the assistants currently operating in the Olomouc and Moravian-Silesian Region. Each assistant takes care of 15 children, as the project will last until March 2013 and will affect approximately 500 children in total. Various cities are included in the project´s implementation, such as Bohumín, Karviná, Orlová and villages and towns in the Prostějov district.
After the FTA´s capacities are full and regular peer group meetings are set, the project will in the long term focus on affecting the TG (children and their families) in terms of understanding education as a precondition for successfully entering the job market and greater competitive ability, limiting the negative elements which demotivate children in their decision whether to remain in the educational process.
The Romodrom for Education project was financed by the European Social Fund via the Operational Programme Education for Competitiveness and the state budget of the Czech Republic.
