OUR PROJECT

STORY_S

Springboard to Roma Youth Success
Empowering young people to recognise and contrast the origins of discrimination.

STORY_S is a project funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014‐2020).
It involves partners from Italy, Spain, Romania and Bulgaria and has the University of Bergamo as project coordinator. The partners come from University and the third sector organisations in order to facilitate actions rooted in specific geographical contexts in light of academic and theoretical reflections.

STORY_S project wants to support young Roma, boys and girls, in continuing and supporting their study path or professional career. To achieve this aim we adopt a peer approach involving young Roma as mentees and Roma and non-Roma young people as mentors.
The project is focused on the empowerment of young Roma and on raising awareness in order to contrast discriminatory phenomena.

The high number of young Roma who drop out the secondary schools before achieving their degree, or the number of Roma boys and girls who can’t/don’t access to highly qualified professional careers is a consequence of multiple intersecting factors, in which stereotypes and stigma play a significant role.

To address this issue, STORY_S promotes the direct involvement of young people using participatory approaches, such as mentoring, active methodologies for anti-discrimination workshops and citizenships incubators.

We think that the exchange of support, confidence and examples of success between boys and girls who come from different socio-cultural backgrounds (but share the same age) is a right way to empower in youth.

The encounter among Roma and non-Roma peers can also be see as an important step to improve thought, recognition and deconstruction of discriminatory dynamics, beyond the specific Roma case, so to see their common socio-cultural roots.