Early literacy development of Roma children from Romania: Bridging the socio-economic divide

About this project

<p>It is well known that despite great deals of effort made towards social and economic integration of Roma population by local, national and European institutions (e.g. Decade of Roma Inclusion), Roma people still face poverty, segregation and discrimination throughout Europe. The focus of our project is literacy development of Roma children from early school years until the end of middle school.&nbsp;The proposal aims to enhance and improve our understanding of the situation of Roma population by targeting the development of their literacy skills.</p> <p>The current project proposal (ELIRA 2.0) is a natural continuation of a previous project funded by EEA grants during 2014-2017 (ELIRA). The current project proposal dwells on the research-based evidence collected during the previous project in order to apply the research results by developing a long-term high-intensity educational program aiming to positively impact the literacy skills of Roma children and their non-Roma peers from disadvantaged communities.</p> <p>The implementation will be conducted with the help of members of a pro-Roma NGO from Romania (OTE). The excellent collaboration of the organisation with Babes-Bolyai University and University of Oslo was already established in ELIRA four years ago when it was contracted by Babes-Bolyai University&nbsp;to assist with the project implementation. This collaboration is also highly relevant given the topic of this call and it is in line with the recommendation that projects that aim to address the topic ”Roma inclusion and empowerment ” should consult with 3 pro-Roma organizations.</p>

Bilateral cooperation results

The project strengthen the bilateral collaboration by helping both Norvegian and Romanian researchers to develop professionally. Thanks to this project and this collaboration, the PI has developed a Laboratory of Advanced Studies in the field of Literacy within Babes-Bolyai University’s STAR Institute. Thanks to this collaboration, the Norwegian researchers are now running an Excellence Center at the university of Oslo – Center of Research on equality in education – which is focused on studying the impact of economic inequality on the academic development of socio-economically disadvantaged children. Thanks to this collaboration, the Norwegian and Romanian researchers have successfully secured another grant and drafter two other grants proposals which will be submitted for funding this year.

Project partners

• University of Oslo Donor project partner· Norway