Romania Roma Role Models Project Brochure (English)

7/31/2019 Romania Roma Role Models Project Brochure (English)

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What do you want to be when you grow up?

stories about the power of dreams

Of all the stereotypes circulang about the Roma, the one that they do not want to go to school is perhaps

the most pervasive. There are no stascs and no arguments, never mind alternave explanaons poverty,

discriminaon, ethnic segregaon in schools, all commonly wrien o as excuses that can convince some

people otherwise. But it is not these people we are addressing.

The project What do you want to be when you grow up? aims to reach Roma children who have to grow

up with such denunciaons ringing in their ears, and to encourage these children to disprove them. Secondly,

we are also speaking to the people, whether Roma or non-Roma, who are already disproving them to urgethem to keep doing so. And, last but not least, were reaching out to those prepared to challenge the clichs

that have become received wisdom. For our enre audience, the project What do you want to be when you

grow up? brings to the fore the stories of several Roma people who have a job

because they went to school who pay taxes and who are neither dirty

nor beggars, nor even quaint. We chose to chart the life stories of

those Roma who, though many, do not seem to register on the public

radar. We interact with them every day and somemes even trust

them with our lives; they are doctors, nurses, lawyers, magistrates,

social workers, bus and taxi drivers, reghters, soldiers, but also

journalists, professors, teachers, priests, economists and more. It is

these Roma about whom, people oen say, with what they see as

the best intenons, you wouldnt think they were gypsies, would

you? Were talking about those Roma who fail to conform to the

stereotypes perpetrated by the media, by ignorance, even by the dic-


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onary, and who are therefore ignored by the righteously indignant. They are the so-

called invisible Roma: invisible to most of society and sadly also invisible to the

great majority of children from their own ethnic group, whose dreams and life

chances are drascally curtailed by what most people are convinced is a Romachilds lot in life.

My mum le school at around 15. I asked her why she didnt stay in school

longer and she said that it wasnt an opon it was about as likely as me working

for NASA.(Marian Ursan, sociologist)

Through its three components book, lm and photographs the

project What do you want to be when you grow up? aims to show these children

that, with the combined eorts of society, school, family and themselves, such lim-

ing stereotypes can not only be ignored, but also refuted. The message holds

equally true for adults, especially for those willing to accept the challenge to

queson ready-made ideas about the Roma and to make the eort to see the

people around them the way they are. Invisible Roma are not the excepons

to the rule which is based on lack of acquaintance and lazy stereotyping and through this project we argue that they can funcon both as role models

for the former, and counterarguments to the prejudices of the laer.

Please dont sit this gypsy child next to my child!

(Mdlin Mandin, actor)


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To this end, we should add that it is not by chance that most of the projects

contributors are not of Roma ethnicity themselves, even though our

Roma colleagues are the authors of the concepon. Aside from the

educaonal component of our endeavor, we thought it was important

to give a mainstream, non-Roma perspecve, drawing on the views ofpeople acve in the Roma movement, supporters of this movement

and the merely curious. Because an important aspect of our project is

geng acquainted with the other, we paved the way for this process,

of which being confronted with ones own prejudices is a part, to take

place. We beneted, especially in terms of the wrien material, from the

freedom granted by life-story interviews. We expanded on this freedom by

including our own reacons, both immediate and following reecon, with

which we hope any honest reader can occasionally idenfy. Moreover, we hopethat we can convey some of the impact to our readers, who didnt have the privilege to look into the eyes of

our interlocutors to see the expression on their faces change as they told their story.

In terms of our approach, the life-story interview and the narrave research associated with it depend greatly

on the context in which the discussions take place and the subjecve recepon of the spoken material. This

subjecvity undergoes mulple refracons: on the one hand, that of the narrator, who reconstructs his/her

life in accordance with their own values and percepons, but also while seeing him-/herself from the outside,

ancipang the expectaons of the other, and, on the other hand, the subjecvity of the receiver, necessarilyempathec, open like the diaphragm of a camera set to maximum exposure, who at the end of this explora-

on comes to realize he/she has learned more not just about others, but also about him-/herself.

There is also a third role, one that is oen overlooked by similar studies: that of the wider audience. In our

project, the audience is very important, because we didnt want to produce a dry academic study of limited

use, but a vivid collecon of life stories and our responses to them. As a result, we like to think that regard-


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less of the audiences current opinions on Roma, they will read about how we got to know the other and

perhaps nd aspects they recognize. Similarly, we like to think that young people of all ethnicies, to whom

these stories are addressed, who are at the age of making life choices, will recognize something in the stories

of those depicted and dream more freely of what they want to be when they grow up.

At my school the majority of pupils were ethnic Romanians, and I was the only Roma in the class.

Children discriminate against you. You learn to discriminate from kindergarten, from pri-

mary school At the beginning you dont understand why the other kids look at you and

then start to imitate a crow or something I really studied hard; I was among the top

ve in the class, just like I was in high school and elsewhere. I wasnt just an aver-

age child, I was good; I was picked to compete in the Olympiad. I was a very good

athlete I was captain of the football and handball teams throughout secondaryschool. And when they see that a Roma is more intelligent than them and has bet-

ter results than them, many people are jealous. And you knew it when they were

organizing a party and you werent invited, or when they were talking about you,

or gossiping and that sort of thing. But if you are a strong person and you get

through it all, you have won.(George Lctu, journalist)

Despite this opmisc message, we should say that these stories are not enrely happy,even if they end well. They are stories of discriminaon and deprivaon, hardship, frustra-

ons, fears and somemes precarious situaons. But they are also stories about the power of each of the

protagonists to get through it, somemes, with unimaginable eort. Or stories about the power some of

us have to make the human, natural, and normalgestures from which most of us are separated by a wall of

prejudice.


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I knew from the second grade that I would study medicine. Unfortunately, my deci-

sion was prompted largely by bad experiences of the medical system. I suered

from ill health as a child and was always in and out of hospital. At some point I

realized that things were not as they should be, because every me we went to

the hospital, my father gave me to my mother who is not a Roma to hold, andshe took me inside. I did not experience discriminaon directly, but my father

must have been so scarred by it in his youth, that when he had children, from

the beginning he tried not to expose himself to it, both at school he never came

to parents evening and at the doctors, because he didnt want them to nd out

that we were Roma children in order that we were treated as well as possible

(Corina Stanciu, student at the Medicine Faculty)

Some of our interviewees remember their encounter with an open-minded teacher, who was able to look

beyond the skin color or assumpons about the Roma, and managed to see the person in front of them and

support him/her. We should add that, although the sole criterion on which we selected the

parcipants in this project was their educaonal background, not their negave expe-

riences, we discovered in the process, that the vast majority of them had endured

all these things. But they managed to get through it: somemes through their

own eorts, somemes with the help of a benevolent character, like in fairy

tales. Hence the heartening tone of their stories.

At high school, I met someone who had a profound eect on me: my Romani-

an language teacher. He had also been my fathers teacher and when they met

again, my father told him a lile about our lives. I think it touched him to learn

that my mother was sick, that my parents had ve sons and that we were always


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struggling to achieve something. He tutored us in grammar, and as a result I got

over 9 in the university entrance exam. But apart from this, this teacher taught me

to ask a lot of myself, to be polite, to have respect for people. He showed me the

joy of reading and in-depth learning. He treated me like an intellectual, although

I was only 16 or 17 years old. I would visit this gentlemans home, sit at his tableand if he realized I was hungry he would ask his wife to bring me some food. It

was a privilege for me to be part of his circle.(Daniel Gang, orthodox priest)

The main diculty that the people whose stories we feature faced was poverty.

Some would argue that poverty is not about ethnicity. However, while 23% of the

Romanian populaon lives in poverty, among the Roma the gure is 80%. For many of

the commentators who assume a lack of interest among the Roma in learning, it is impossibleto imagine what it would be like for a Roma teenager to go to school in his mothers high

heels, because not all the children in the family have their own pair of shoes a point

made by one of our interviewees.

Mum pawned her wedding ring and earrings so I could go to school. I cant

forget that.(George Rdulescu, sociologist)

It is equally hard to conceive of how movated a Roma child must be to go

to school and try to be the best student for fear of ending up as a brick maker,

like his disadvantaged relaves, then going on to win the Romanian Press Clubs

Grand Prize for the Print Press:


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Every me I didnt get a good mark at school my mum threatened that if I didnt do well in school she would

pack me o to make bricks. And I didnt want to make bricks. People from my neighborhood are sll making

bricks now, and its very tough. Its a very hard and poorly paid job, where you are dependent on others, and

they wont pay the price you want Its not reliable money, you are not respected its like youre the lowest

in society.(George Lctu, journalist)

And how can those who have never experienced such condions or tried to empathize

envisage the lasng eects that would remain for a child whose parents had made

such great sacrices just to make sure his or her basic needs were met?

Dad used to take out a loan every autumn to buy things for the children. Tosupport us, Mum used to sell sunower seeds. She took a sack

to the football matches, the factory, wherever she could

sell any. Our parents struggled very hard for us to have

the basic living condions... books, shoes; somemes

they would forgo their own needs. Dad would have

to wear substandard shoes in winter so we could have

winter boots.(Marian Duminic, border guard)

Other mes, the parents remained behind, and the children determinately fol-

lowed their own path, even without parental support, thus showing that eve-

rything can be overcome if you believe in your dream:


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For example, Mum didnt know that in my rst year of university, I survived on bread

and milk one week, and bread and apples another week; if I ate spam wow! I went

with my friend and we bought spam and sat on the bench we had our bench

in Cimigiu Park and we sat on the bench in Cimigiu, and we never felt happier

than when we were eang spam.(Oana Parnic, social worker)

We dont need to add that everyone we talked to was already working while

they were at university, even while they were in high school, because the family

situaon did not allow them to devote themselves enrely to

studying. Despite all this, they never gave up.

I come from a modest family, which had to deal with some

unusual problems: my father had an accident at work he was a crane operator

by trade when I was very young, just 6. It was a very tough me for our fam-

ily, as dad was permanently disabled and could never work again. I dont have

great memories from my me at university either, because they were dicult

years. I had to work and help my family as my brothers were younger and sll

in high school. On top of that I had to study for university. (Ion Sandu, history

teacher and school inspector)

Aside from the nancial dicules and perhaps even harder to bear was the discrimina-

on they endured from childhood, both in wider society and also in school, from their classmates, their class-

mates parents, even the teacher.


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There were two types of kids when I was lile, the kind whose parents let them play

with me and the other kind whose parents didnt dont play with gypsies, as the

saying goes (...) I wondered what was wrong with me. I washed what I should

wash, I ate what I should eat, I didnt have nits. Why did they say that about me?

(Oana Parnic, social worker)

My maths teacher was supposed to come four mes a week but he only came

twice, and arrived late. Instead of teaching us maths, he would ask us about our

lives. How do you wash, with rain water? Do you herd the goats? And how do you

live? Do you live in a tent? And so on. This gentleman came from Bucharest I un-

derstood he was the son of a university professor, so what can you do? With the otherchildren the Hungarians and Romanians he had no problem. The discussion was about us,

the Roma. He would circle around the class, saying lame this, lame that this was the word that stuck with

me, lame. Unl then I had never heard this word, nor did I know what it meant. I ask

my colleagues: hey, what does it mean? They dont know, because in the countryside

we dont know such things. I go home and I ask my mum: Mum, I heard the maths

teacher saying lame in class; lame, what does it mean? It means something

bad. Okay, something bad, what does the teacher think is bad? I didnt know

what he thought was bad, I just didnt get it(Mioara Ganea, primary school

teacher)

Even knowing that all these stories ended happily and that the protagonists

achieved their ambions and even more, its impossible not to be struck by

the outrageous injusces they were subjected to because of the ignorance and


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Romania Roma Role Models Project Brochure (English)

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