I read a study once that suggested that successful candidates are often selected during the first five minutes of a job interview. People, it seems, have a tendency to quickly assess others based on whether their looks, mannerisms, and demeanor inspire a sense of confidence and trust. We seek out in others what we value in ourselves, even in the most innocuous settings.

Webster defines prejudice as a “preconceived idea.” These prejudices could be minor or they might be major. We all have them. They have the potential to distance or alienate; to engender fear or ridicule. The Roma have suffered the brunt of prejudice for centuries. But when I first traveled to Bulgaria, I had no preconceived ideas regarding the Roma to speak of. In fact, I had never heard of them.

The Peace Corps placed us to live with a host family for three months while we studied the Bulgarian language and prepared for our work assignments. By chance, I was placed with a Roma family. This was highly unusual at the time. Roma in Eastern Europe are desperately indigenous and often could not pass the requisite criteria to host volunteers. My host family did not live in the traditional mahala, the Roma ghetto. They had acquired a small home cheaply during the Second World War

It was a comfortable home, though they were desperately poor. The mother was Bulgarian; she had been wooed and won as a young woman by a Roma construction worker. Her family disowned her for a time, though had long since reconciled by the time I arrived. Still, she claimed to be Roma at heart. Her children were considered Roma. And her passion took her daily to the heart of the mahala—she was a kindergarten teacher to Romani children.

In that home I experienced a kind of vibrancy I had never before experienced. I fell in love. With the kindness, the life, the sorrow, the music, the culture, and the grim determination to laugh in the face of adversity. It came as something of a shock when I left to teach in a far-off town and was greeted with some horror. They let you live with a Roma family? You didn’t get sick? They didn’t steal from you? They didn’t behave badly toward you?

I couldn’t understand why people thought such things could be true. I immediately began to make a nuisance of myself and asked everyone I could whether I might find Roma leaders with whom to organize a summer camp for Roma children. I met with a lot of resistance. It was bad enough that I wanted to help the Roma- but I was an American who wanted to help. Who did I think I was? Then I met an expatriate professor allegedly married to a Roma woman. When I asked him to help he gruffly snorted. I heard nothing more for many months and began to think the whole thing was a bad idea.

Then, one day, he called. “We’re ready if you’re ready,” he reported. “If you have the funding to make this happen, we can provide Roma teachers and students. They are looking forward to the summer camp.” I was dumbstruck—and then ecstatic. I immediately began making calls and writing letters to the States. Another Peace Corps volunteer chipped in, and soon we had our funding—and our camp.

The children were marvelous—excited, eager, and courteous. They were young and yet seemed so old. What were they thinking, who did they want to become? The camps passed without a hitch. We played games and had lessons on Roma culture and history. Most of the children had never heard anything positive about their origins. They soaked it up like a sponge.

Then the next year was upon us. I began to think of organizing another camp for the children, but a Roma woman with whom I was working had bigger ideas. She wanted to target the camps toward high school students. How many are there, I wondered? So few Roma children at the time made it to high school. This would be an opportunity to encourage them to complete their education and to discuss their culture and history in a positive light—something lacking in schools at the time. Together with other Peace Corps Volunteers, we applied for a Small Project Assistance (SPA) grant. We worked with local professors to design a curriculum that emphasized motivational exercises and team-building. And we invited Roma musicians and activists to speak with the youth. The camps were a huge success. The prototype for all the camps that have followed had begun.

These camps have now been replicated across Bulgaria. This summer will be the eighth consecutive year in which they have occurred. It might be easy to discount the profoundly positive impact of this unique curriculum—which reinforces positive thinking, teamwork, motivation, and sense of self. But the importance of camps for Roma youth continues. Roma are still the most disadvantaged ethnic minority group in Eastern Europe. Despite the daily challenges they face, the majority of Roma youth with whom I have worked continue to exhibit a passion for life, and a desire to make a difference—both in their lives as well as their communities. Several youth from our camps have gone on to attend college, others have become activists in their communities, still others left with the simple conviction that their history was something to be proud of. This, in my mind, is a cause worth supporting and fighting for.

Sarah

Happy New Year!

I would like to extend my best wishes to the Arete Youth Blog Contributors and Arete Youth Partners for a happy and healthy-2008.

Many of us start each year vowing to live healthier and make an essential change, but then reality saps our motivation to make a difference in our lives. What could be done? Sticking to REALITY can be an alternative.

Reality…and motivation- those are the things that should keep young people going. One needs to realize that persistence and patience will lead them to succeed in life and eventually one’s hard work will be rewarded.

Emigration…the constant human desire for self-satisfaction is not a new phenomenon. It has existed since the rise of humanity- either on conscious or subconscious level of human mind. However, nowadays, emigration has become a necessity for the Bulgarian youngsters. Young people in Bulgaria don’t feel much of a difference because most of them don’t dare to stand out of the crowd.

According to me the Bulgarian educational System in general doesn’t need transformation. What is needs is a community involvement. It is a matter of appreciation of what the educational system is now. My observations are that Bulgarian students’ minds are mainly occupied with making comparison between the different institutions instead of benefiting from an institution. Besides, the development of the educational institution, in particular, depends on how we perceive it.

Maybe, one should ask himself if the opportunities abroad are really so secure as they are believed to be?

To be persuaded, means to act, but in accordance with the reality(including social and cultural heritage).

All Bulgarian institutions: educational, cultural, social, economic and others, are in a process of improvement. The idealistic goal for them is to become similar to the ones functioning in the Western societies. However, idealism differs from realism. A change requires more than dreams.

I hope this provoke more of you to discuss the different issues Bulgaria face today.

This is a report on integration that covers the period between Jan 2006 and Dec 2006
in 17 Municipalities. It was produced by the Center for Interethnic Dialogue and Tolerance.

See document here:
ANNUAL REPORT about the implementation of the policies for Roma integration in Bulgaria for 2006

Here is a study done by the Insitute for Market on “EXPECTED LONG-TERM BUDGETARY BENEFITS TO ROMA EDUCATION IN BULGARIA (2007)”

“This analysis estimates the expected long-term benefits to investing into Roma education in Bulgaria. By budget benefits we envisage the direct financial benefits to the education to the national budget. The basic perception is that investing extra money into Roma education would pay off even in fiscal terms. In order to be successful, investments should take place in early childhood. Successful investments are also expensive, but if it is done the right way, such investments compensate the costs in terms of extra tax benefits in the future. This study looks at the expected budgetary benefits of a successful investment. However, it does not deal with how to achieve success…”

“The present value of the net budget benefits from education in one Roma child is more than EUR 82 thousand. For example, if investment is made in the education of 10 000 Roma children now, this would lead to net budget benefits of more than EUR 822 million. Respectfully, if investment in the education of 30 000 Roma children is made now, it would lead to more than EUR 2.468 billion net budget benefits.”

The article: http://ime.bg/en/articles/expected-long-term-budgetary-benefits-to-roma-education-in-bulgaria-2007/
The document: IME 2007 Report

Dreams…and aspirations – those are the things that keep young people going. One needs to feel that one’s hard work and efforts will be duly rewarded in order to keep up with the hard work and to continue to aim at self-development.

Emigration… the notion of leaving Bulgaria is something that fuels the dreams of a lot of Bulgarian youngsters these days. And it’s not because Bulgarians don’t love their country… but simply because it is easier to dream elsewhere. Or at least to make your dreams come true elsewhere…Young people in
Bulgaria feel that standing out of the crowd with one’s accomplishments does not make much difference because there is no one to notice you or to reward you. That is the main reason why those who want to stand out, who dream of standing out conceive that the single way to do it is to go abroad.

A lot of my peers do not even see the point in studying too hard since the content and purposes of university education in the Bulgarian tradition is so detached from real-life experience that it is of no use later on in one’s career. The solution, they say, is to study “selectively” but of course you always run the risk of making a bad distinction between what is worth learning and what is irrelevant. Another problem, they say, is the lack of extracurricular interest-oriented activities where they could evince their organizational and leadership skills – university media are low quality and struggling, clubs are barely existing.

What could be done? As a person experiencing the essence and benefiting from the liberal arts style education extremely focused on student participation and activeness and hence having the chance to compare my personal experience with that of my peers, I could tell that the institutions in Bulgaria, where my friends study at need transformation. Education needs to be transformed into a more interactive one, where those who want would be given the chance and the incentive to stand out, to be different, to be innovative, where young people would have the chance to take the initiative and found their own clubs, to indulge in their field of interest by means of extracurricular activities, to engage in community service, to compete in various contests, to participate in NGOs, to travel as part of different programs. Although the process of transformation could be long and cumbersome it is worth commencing it and the first step in this respect is maybe providing information in the sense of informing young people of the opportunities out there and how a benign transformation in the educational system would help them reach out and grab those opportunities. Young people should also change their mentality and realize that they are the ones to give impetus to that transformation for their own and their peers’ benefit.

I personally would not leave Bulgaria permanently. Still, I would most probably leave for a couple of years for the sake of finishing my education abroad. Many young people like me believe that a degree from a foreign university would make them more competitive on Bulgarian soil. The problem is that once having established themselves abroad it is difficult to find reasons to come back to Bulgaria. True, in Bulgaria one is more competitive but one is not sure whether one would be given the opportunity to compete at all, or whether there will be any positions to compete for. They therefore opt for the more secure opportunities abroad.

What could be done? Young people should be persuaded that Bulgaria needs them and their skills, that they are the ones to “invest” in the future. They should feel that they could make a difference, that they could be leaders and build the life their dreams depict here and now, in Bulgaria.

Ogi is one of our participants from 2004 and group leader from 2005 - 2007. He is a journalism major at Shoumen University in Bulgaria and this article has appeared in Transitions Online.

See article here:
Ogi’s Article

Unchecked Danger
by Ognyan Isaev
17 December 2007

Prostitution is a serious problem in Bulgaria that threatens thousands of women, but little has been done to stop the “crime of the flesh.”

SHUMEN, Bulgaria | Along roads and highways in Bulgaria, there are often clusters of women. They wave to drivers and passersby, hoping to get their attention. Some also wait in the lobbies of hotels along the roads, smiling at people stopping in for the night. At a four-star hotel in northeastern Bulgaria, several girls sit on large sofas, their faces plastered with makeup and their bodies scantily covered by short skirts, low-neck tops, and sleek stockings. They smell of heavy perfume. By their sides are obese, greasy men who are eyeing the hotel customers for fat wallets and drunkenness.

The women are prostitutes, the men their pimps. Their roadside activities remain largely unregulated, due to inadequate national legislation.

There are many concerns at stake in the debate over Bulgarian prostitution. Between 60 and 70 percent of women working as prostitutes are under 18, Svetoslav Spasov, chairman of Bulgaria’s Parliamentary Commission for Youth and Sports, recently said on television. Not all of them chose their profession.

“A great number of them are forced to do it by the pimps and the clients, too,” Spasov said. “Nobody protects them. If 10 journalists or [members of parliament] disappeared, a huge scandal would break out, but if 10 prostitutes from the highway disappeared, nobody would notice.”

Spasov and others are pushing for legislation to regulate prostitution. They note that the women’s lives are at risk. The workers face coercive pimps and customers, and also the flow of drugs and disease that inevitably accompany unfettered sex trafficking. So far, however, little progress has been made.

“To adopt a prostitution law, there should be a political will and not only MPs but also the ministries of internal affairs, health, education, labor, social policy, and justice to back it up,” Spasov said.

DANGEROUS LIVES

While sex trafficking is a problem for all European countries, it is particularly acute in the southeastern states. The International Organization for Migration has estimated that roughly 200,000 women are trafficked throughout the region each year, particularly in Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, and Moldova. Moreover, women from Eastern Europe frequently are trafficked in countries further west; the German Federal Criminal Police Office released a report in 2003 stating that 11 percent of women providing sex services in Germany were from Bulgaria.

In Bulgaria, the northeast is the region with the most prostitution. According to the National Service of Combating Organized Crime, the cities with the worst situations are Varna, Burgas, Turgovishte, Razgrad, Dobrich, and Shumen. The women sell themselves openly, unafraid of the authorities.

Many say they feel that they have no choice.

At the four-star hotel with the sofa-filled lobby, one of the women most in demand is a 29-year-old Romani worker. The woman’s husband died seven years ago, and with the money she earns from prostitution, she supports herself, her mother, and her 14-year-old daughter. “Honestly, I try to hide my work from my family because I know they will be ashamed of me. But this is how I survive,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “If I stop doing it, how will I support my family?”

Another woman whom customers frequently used to ask for finished high school two years ago, and she has a boyfriend who is also her pimp. But no one has seen her in a while. Colleagues say she may have left the country for work elsewhere.

The women get half of what they earn, and their pimps – sometimes women have more than one – divide the rest among themselves. The hotel hasn’t banned the women from its lobby because it would be bad for business; when customers come for the women, they pay for rooms. Among the clients, there are police officers, politicians, drug dealers, university professors, actors, and foreigners – some of whom came to Bulgaria specifically for the sex trade.

Law enforcement shows up sometimes, and when it does, the pimps vanish. The women are left to defend themselves, and a few have been jailed for a day.

While some women have chosen their line of work, others were coerced into it. Some say they struggle to handle the stresses of their jobs, including drunk clients, rape, and other abuse. A few have even ended their lives. Recently, a young girl jumped from the fourth floor of a building in northeastern Bulgaria where pimps had locked her up. They had kidnapped the girl from her village and wanted to earn easy money by selling her for sex. She survived, but others have not been so lucky.

LINGERING ON THE LAW

Governments in southeastern Europe have made some efforts to combat sex trafficking, even joining forces in 2004 in a cooperative investigation of organized crime, including prostitution rings. In Bulgaria, the law technically punishes the trafficking of a minor with two to 10 years imprisonment and fines, according to the U.S. State Department’s Country Report for Bulgaria. Inducement to prostitution is punishable by 10 to 20 years imprisonment, if the victim is a minor. These laws, however, are not enforced efficiently.

Still, the government considered legalizing prostitution until as recently as October. Some legislators argued that legalization would allow the government to oversee and tax the profession, and that it would prevent minors from participating in it. But others, who ultimately overran the legislative proposal, said legalization would pose great risks for the growth of kidnapping and trafficking women against their will.

“We should not make a difference between the women victims of trafficking and the ones that offer sex services voluntarily…. If a woman says she does it voluntarily, does this mean we have to legalize prostitution?” Janice Raymond, director of the Coalition Against Trafficking Women, an organization working to combat exploitation, told the Bulgarian weekly newspaper Capital “Some people say they take heroin voluntarily. Does it mean, we have to legalize heroin because some people take it voluntarily?”

At an October forum on human trafficking, Interior Minister Rumen Petkov called prostitution a “crime of the flesh” and argued that Bulgaria should stand strong against the practice. It is unclear, however, when the ruling coalition will pass or even draft a bill fully banning prostitution.

The dragging debate has allowed prostitution in Bulgaria to continue existing in a sketchy legal area, and ultimately to boom. Antoaneta Georgieva, director of Face to Face Bulgaria, an organization dedicated to combating forced prostitution, states on her group’s website: “Trafficking in people is the second most lucrative illegal business after arms trade.”

Hello people! I’m sorry that I haven’t written in awhile. For my next entry, I wanted to write about how young Roma people here in my town, Pazardjik, get married. Many people say that young Roma men kidnap young females and force them to marry them. For example, a man kidnaps a woman from her school and takes her away with him. Actually, more often than not, the young couple wants to get married but their parents will not allow it. When they escape, they have to be away from the town for at least one day and one night so the people can start looking for them. Of course, the friends of the boy and girl know that they have ran away and they know where they are. Once everyone in the neighborhood realizes that the couple has escaped, it is assumed that the girl is no longer a virgin and she now has to marry this boy. When they come back the two sets of parents meet and if the girl says that she wanted to escape and she wants to stay with the boy, then it is okay. If she doesn’t want to marry this boy, she remains with her family. However, it will be harder for her to marry later because she is viewed as having already been with another man. When the couple decides to get married, the family of the boy prepares a nice romantic room where they will sleep after their party celebrating their engagement. The tradition is to put a white sheet on the bed of the young couple and in the morning they check to see if there is blood on the sheet, meaning that the girl was a virgin. Virginity is very important in our culture. If they’ve already slept together for the first time on the night that they ran away, they may also bring a sheet to prove that she was a virgin. The important thing is that this is the first man that she has had intercourse with. The elderly women in the community are very wise and have specific things that they look for in the blood to make sure that it is authentic and that the girl indeed has lost her virginity that evening. The next day they display the sheet surrounded by flowers, paint the girl with Henna, dress her in new clothes, and throw a party. It is also customary for people to give gifts or money to the girl after coming to celebrate.

Well, this is most the tradition, but when I get married I won’t do it like that! Maybe because I’m older and I would like my mother to know who I want to marry, rather than escaping with someone.

Hello everyone, I thought it might be interesting to explain to you a Roma tradition of ‘stealing’ your wife which, is not understood by many and affects schooling and education.

Here is an example - In a school age a young boy and young girl (8 - 9 grades) are hanging out together. There is nothing wrong here, right? Their relationship becomes very strong, lovely and deep. In most cases their parents know about their relationship. There are cases where parents do not agree about the chosen girl or boy, but this doesn’t affect the relation of the youths. Sometimes they become closer and closer. Up to here nothing wrong, right?

Now after a year relationship (if the youths don’t break up the relation) there comes the difficult part. The couple being together so much time now on, of course affects their schools. They start missing classes, not attending at all school activities. Or some drop-out from school. That’s fine - every teenage has to pass through it and to experience it and of course to overcome it. But it comes another stage where the couple would like to have sex – yes right, sex! But as you may know in Roma community the sex before marriage is impossible. The girl should be virgin until marriage; otherwise her image and her family’s image will be crashed. All the community will blame them. Also for the parents of the girl it would be very shameful since their daughter did sex before marriage. So when the couple (just know that there are only 16 years old or less) would like to have sex in most cases ending with marriage. I’m saying married because once they had sex; the girl should marry this boy. And that’s how it comes the part where the boy has to ‘steal’ the girl. They just get out of the town where the live and staying one, two or more nights, depend on the situation at home. Their girl’s parents start looking for them, asking their friends where they are in order to take their daughter, because she is small or the boy’s family is not good enough for their daughter.

It’s accepted when the girl gets married that her parents and the boy’s parents will have a big celebration where the whole community gets together to dance and to learn if the girl is virgin. If she is not,, there is no celebration. There are few cases where they still celebrate but instead of hot Rakia (a traditional alcohol in Bulgaria) cold Rakia is provided. This signifies that the girl is not virgin. Once the couple is together and the celebration and wedding has passed, typically the couple do not continue school.

Pakiv is a Roma organization that Emil is involved with and one that I had many positive experiences with while in Bulgaria. Their network of active Roma throughout Bulgaria and the Balkans is extensive and impressive. As a group they have activated many groups of Roma and have crusaded citizenship within the Roma community. Their members are much needed role models for the Roma community. Please take a look at their first newsletter (in English!)
PENewsletter and Pakiv web site

According to Pakiv - Our mission is to strengthen democratic practices and effective fulfillment of human rights by promoting participatory approaches to development in Roma communities. We seek to influence policies for social inclusion of disadvantaged (Roma) groups by stimulating processes of critical reflection, learning, and exchange on local experiences and practices.
Our objectives are:

It is important to stress that PEN is an open structure, which brings in other young Roma and non-Roma activists and organizations. One of the major aims of the network is to promote critical reflection and to serve as a platform where members create joint projects based on their interests. It is a space where people from different backgrounds share their views and take concrete actions on issues related to Roma, such as income-generation, education or health issues.