The Young Voices project aimed to build a Strategic Partnership of organizations that are working towards the advancement of the Roma community, in particular Roma women and youth. The priorities of the project were social inclusion, promoting empowerment, and promoting quality youth work.
Through knowledge sharing, capacity building and creative dissemination outputs, which will include a Roma Women’s Manifesto, the Young Voices project reached and engaged Roma women and youth from four different European cities, brought them together in a course in which they discussed and shared good practices and came up with solutions to overcoming barriers and promoting a network among young Roma women. The opinion of these young women materialized in national manifestos and a collated European manifesto.
The objectives of the project were to:
– Contribute to the increase of social inclusion of grassroots young Roma women in Europe, based on the creation of a space of egalitarian dialogue in which they are able to learn about best practices and to discuss how to overcome barriers.
– Promote the networking among young grassroots Roma women coming from the most diverse European neighborhoods.
– Contribute to the improvement of public services actions aimed at Roma young women empowerment and promoting quality youth work.
– Increase of political incidence of the young Roma women through recommendations to key stakeholders.
The target group of the Young Voices project was made up of grassroots young Roma women (16 – 30 years old) who are involved in formal or informal education activities in the project partner associations, but because of their social economic situation are not currently participating in formal social or political arenas.
In August 2019, IIT hosted the last transnational meeting of the project. The main result of this meeting was the elaboration of the final version of the Manifesto. The Manifesto is available for download in several languages, at this link: https://youngvoicesproject.eu/manifesto/. This document was subsequently used by all project partners both to promote the project but especially to raise public awareness about the issue of Roma women and young people in Europe.