Deliverable 3.4.: Ten workshops with Roma and non-Roma parents and students

SUMMARY:

The workshops aimed to create common spaces for Roma and non-Roma parents and children, to be able to share life experiences and memories. A peripheric school of Timișoara was selected for the activity. The workshops were coordinated by a WUT expert with the support of voluntary students. As timeline, the 10 meetings were organized once a week, after the school hours, invitations being send to children and parents, both Roma and non-Roma, from the primary school classes.

In each session, one or more parents shared general or thematic childhood stories (like Christmas stories, animals and pets, heroes) with the other participants. The children were asked to draw a character, frame, fragment, action, idea from the stories they listened to and to fill a short form about the story and the storyteller.

The workshops took place between 17 October 2019 and 13 February 2020 and and the number of participants to each session varied between 14 and 25, with an average of 17 per workshop. 

CONCLUSIONS:

The activity was received very well by both parents and children, during the 10 workshops all of the participant parents sharing childhood stories and life experiences with the others. The children enjoyed drawing the stories told by the parents. A series of discussions followed each story on thematic like morality, respecting other people, sharing, helping each other.

At the end of the ten sessions each of the participant received a certificate of participation.

The workshops worked well and managed to reach their target of creating common spaces between Roma and non-Roma participants due to their simple design: sharing stories between adults but in front of their children. The adults need to be an example for the youngsters determined them to prepare and choose the appropriate stories and to share positively with the others and the children were very interested in the stories shared by their own parents.