Speak UP! Girls for change

Roma communities in Slovakia continue to face systemic social exclusion, poverty, and unequal access to quality education. These challenges disproportionately affect Roma girls and young women, who experience intersecting inequalities linked to ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic disadvantage. According to the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (2021), up to 65% of Roma aged 18–24 do not complete secondary education.

Beyond structural barriers, Roma girls remain significantly underrepresented in decision-making and community life. Young Roma women are overrepresented among NEET youth and often lack access to safe spaces, role models, mentoring, and opportunities to influence decisions affecting their lives. Low societal expectations and the limited visibility of successful Roma women create an “imagination ceiling” that restricts aspirations, self-confidence, and future opportunities.

Gender further deepens exclusion. Roma girls and women are more likely to face early domestic responsibilities, lower participation in higher education and employment, and compounded discrimination. As a result, they remain largely absent from public discourse and community-level decision-making processes.

At the same time, public policies and institutional responses often lack bottom-up perspectives and meaningful participation of Roma communities. International institutions repeatedly highlight the absence of participatory data and lived experiences of Roma girls in shaping policies related to education, inclusion, gender equality, and civic participation.

There is also a lack of long-term participatory support systems focused on leadership development, mentoring, civic participation, and empowerment of Roma girls. Without such mechanisms, Roma girls remain excluded not only from opportunities, but also from spaces where decisions about their lives and communities are made.

The project “Speak UP! Girls for Change” aims to strengthen the leadership, participation, and advocacy capacities of Roma girls (aged 18–24) from marginalized communities, enabling them to actively contribute to community life and influence decision-making processes.
By combining mentoring, leadership development, and participatory research, the project positions participants as community-based experts and active agents of change.

Main Activities:

Participant Selection & Mentoring: Recruitment of 10 Roma girls and 10 mentors, including preparatory training and cultural sensitization to establish strong mentoring tandems.

Leadership Incubator: Workshops focused on leadership, critical thinking, communication, and civic participation to strengthen the girls' competencies.

Research Training: Training in the TEGA methodology for ethical, participatory digital data collection, preparing the participants to become capable “ambassador-researchers”.

Field Research: Participants conduct interviews within their communities to identify systemic barriers and needs, successfully collecting and analyzing at least 100 digitized interviews.

White Paper Development: Analysis of collected data to prepare a policy-oriented publication, resulting in the “White Book through the Eyes of Roma Girls” featuring evidence-based recommendations.

Community Micro-projects: Implementation of 5 small-scale, community-based projects responding to identified community needs and strengthen girls’ participation.

Advocacy & Sustainability: Presentation of findings to stakeholders, advocacy meetings, and the launch of an alumni network, accompanied by the multimedia campaign “My Way, My Voice”.
 

The project “Speak UP! Girls for Change” strengthens the participation, leadership, and advocacy capacities of Roma girls (18–24) from marginalized communities, enabling them to act as community-based experts and actively contribute to decisions affecting their lives and communities. The project is designed as a pilot model with potential for replication through the Divé maky alumni network and future cohorts.

Beneficiaries:

Primary beneficiaries are 10 Roma girls gaining leadership, research, advocacy, and civic participation skills, and 10 female mentors engaged in mutual learning and intercultural exchange.

Secondary beneficiaries include Roma women and girls from marginalized communities, local authorities and institutions gaining access to participatory evidence and recommendations, and the wider public through changing perceptions of Roma girls and women.

Expected Results and Outcomes:

At the individual level, participants will strengthen self-confidence, leadership competencies, civic engagement, communication skills, and the ability to articulate community needs through mentoring and participatory digital research (TEGA). Participants will gain practical experience in public speaking, teamwork, advocacy, and community leadership.

At the community level, the project will generate evidence on systemic barriers through at least 100 interviews and implement 5 community micro-projects responding to identified local needs and increasing visibility of girls’ leadership in their communities.

At the policy level, the project will produce the “White Book through the Eyes of Roma Girls” with evidence-based recommendations for institutions and local authorities, supporting advocacy, participatory dialogue, and inclusion of Roma girls’ perspectives in public decision-making processes.

At the societal level, the project will contribute to changing public narratives by presenting Roma girls as active agents of change through the multimedia campaign “My Way, My Voice”.