Claim and Reality

1. International conference On the educational situation in (and from) South East Europe Bonn, 24 and 25 September, 2013 Claim and Reality

2. Nadir Redzepi Board Member Roma Education Fund FINANCING AND MONITORING ROMA EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

3. The Roma Education Fund was established as part of the Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005-2015) • Work 14 countries, including in all New Member States as Decade signatories • REF’s objective is to reduce the gap in educational outcomes between Roma and non-Roma children • It has three major programs: • Project grants (337 to date) • Higher Education scholarships (1000 a year) • Policy Development, Advocacy and Technical Assistance • Total budget around 7 m EUR per year • 18 Staff in Budapest office, 8 staff in country Roma Education Fund

4. Everyone – from parents to policymakers – has a role to play in supporting children and youth in their education and development. We encourage governments, corporations, philanthropies, and local communities to support policies and invest in programs that help Romani children to get the best start in life and enable them to successfully continue and complete their educational careers. Mission Roma Education Fund

5. Bilateral disputes and ethnic tensions, frequent institutional reforms, state (and nation) building process • Catching-up agenda = copy-paste of EU legislations followed by weak implementation • Limited resources (3-5% GDP), culturally diverse, politically and institutionally unstable • Fragile civil society, dependency culture from donor funds; recent focus on EU funds; SEE Context

6. REF uses funds to: • Move from projects to policies; • Scale up effective interventions; • Go from policies to structural change at local level; • Increase institutional and human capital for absorption of EU funds. REF’s approach

7. Projects per country 2005 to 2012

8. Projects per country 2005 to 2012

9. Countries: Albania

10. Countries: Bulgaria

11. Countries: BiH

12. Countries: Croatia

13. Countries: Kosovo

14. Countries: Macedonia

15. Countries: Montenegro

16. Countries: Serbia

17. Through its programs, REF has trained more than 24,000 teachers in making school environments less hostile to Romani children. Early School Leaving (ESL) programs reached 78,196 Romani children in 13 countries of Central and South Eastern Europe in the period 2005–2012. Through their activities, REF partners have reached out to over 309,000 Romani parents. More than 49,000 children have been supported with direct enrollment in early childhood development programs, which significantly contributes to prevention of early school leaving at later stages of education. Over 35,000 scholarships were granted to Romani students to complete their upper secondary education through the provision of school-based mentoring and tutoring. In just one example of the positive impact that this can have, 90 percent of students supported with scholarships completed the school year with a grade point average (GPA) over 3.05 in Macedonia. Successes

18. Beneficiaries of REF-funded projects

19. In 2012, the REF Board approved 50 new grants (of 80 submitted grant applications) in support of the implementation of projects in 13 countries for a total amount of EUR 2,573,810. • There were 116 active projects in 2012; average project length was about 12 months and average project cost was EUR 53,500. The level of co-funding raised by REF partners in the 50 projects in 2012 reached EUR 1,964,511. Seventy percent of grants were awarded to former REF partners and approximately 30 percent was awarded to new partners. Overall, the average approval rate was 41 percent for 2005–2012. Grants Program

20. Projects per country in 2012

21. REF’s Reimbursable Grants Program provides support to Roma NGOs in accessing EU Structural Funds and other associated funds. A monetary advance is provided to organizations that have been awarded grants from EU sources, allowing them to start activities before actual financing from the respective government agencies or the EU is disbursed. As these disbursements are frequently delayed, without REF’s assistance, these projects would not be able to start on time or would face cash shortages, and it would be unlikely that the project objectives would be achieved. • Until the end of 2012 REF provided reimbursable grants in the total amount of EUR 657,146, thus mobilizing EUR 29,297,130. Reimbursable grants

22. Scholarship Program offers four academic merit-based scholarship schemes in 12 countries of the Decade of Roma Inclusion (all Decade countries except Spain) as well as in Moldova, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The four scholarship schemes are: • Roma Memorial University Scholarship Program (RMUSP) • Roma International Scholar Program (RISP) • Law and Humanities Program (LHP) • Roma Health Scholarship Program (RHSP) Scholarship program

23. Scholarship program

24. Monitoring • Combining opinion-based (qualitative) and measuring factual change(quantitative) • Efforts to include all relevant steps and stakeholders in introducing project/policy adjustments, data collection - measuring soft and hard impact, like developing local partnership, drop out rates, GPA scores, transition from (pre)primary to secondary to tertiary level, number of graduates, etc.

25. In financing REF activities the foundation is experiencing number of challenges: • Funding inconsistencies – disabling to provide multiannual support to one cohort for at least four years. Withdrawal of big donors from the region; • Schools and NGOs focused on short term problems, unable to address underlying causal factors and keep focus on long-term solutions • In rural and undeveloped areas REF has to incentivize school teachers and address the needs of children in similar situation as Roma in order to avoid conflicts Challenges

26. Please visit www.romaeducationfund.orgto read more and learn about how to support us. Thank you!