With 10 to 12 million members, Roma are the biggest ethnic minority in Europe. Opposite to the majorities, Roma do not have their own land and – with limits – also no national identity. What unites them beyond borders of the countries they live in, are their myths, habits and traditions. For the preserving and further development of their cultural identity, their language – Romanes – is indispensable. At the beginning of their migration from India, Romanes (actually Romani – coming from romani chip, „Roma language“) was still a common language. The long way that has been leading Roma for centuries over different continents and countries finally to Europe, but also their often long stay in those countries caused that Romanes fell apart in different dialects. Through the years, more and more words of the according country language were taken over into Romanes or the respective dialects. In a few European countries, e.g. Romania and Spain, it was forbidden for Roma for a long duration of time to speak their own language. This has also contributed to the loss of the common language. Until the younger past, Romanes was mainly only a spoken and orally inherited language. Unfortunately, until today no successfully standardised Romanes exists. Besides, it is written in several alphabets – Latin, Cyrillic and Devanagari. Despite all that, about 4.5 million Roma living in Europe speak Romanes. It is recognised in Macedonia and Kosovo as official regional language and in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary and Romania as minority language. Due to the century lasting social and cultural stigmatization and discrimination of Roma and their language, the use of Romanes as literature and stage language was prevented. This lead to the fact that Romanes could never really be anchored in education. In adult education it plays almost no role at all. With consideration of the fact that the participation of Roma in education after the obligatory school decreases relevantly, it gets clear that adult education is for many Roma older than 18 years the only possibility to educated themselves further, to balance education deficits and – even if late – to participate in lifelong learning. Therefore, our project aimed at preserving Romanes in the long run as relevant part of the cultural identity of Roma and to utilise it for concrete offers of adult education. The two years Strategic Partnership for the exchange of good practice will be realised by organisations from Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, North Macedonia and Romania.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ― Albert EinsteinReading fairy tales to children or storytelling does not only lay a foundation stone of literacy development but relates also to various cross-cultural values and behaviours. Studies also show that regular storytelling activities can help broaden a child’s vocabulary. The imagination of children is promoted when they are listening to fairy tales. Fairy tales contribute to preserving language, habits and traditions.With 10 to 12 million, Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe.Opposite to majority societies, Roma do not have their own land and - with limitations - also no national identity. What unites them beyond the borders of the countries they are living in are their myths, habits and traditions. For preserving and developing their cultural identity further, their language - Romanes - is indispensable. Due to the century long social and cultural stigmatisation and discriminiation of the Roma and their language, the usage of Romanes as literature and stage language was avoided. This led to the situation that Romanes could not really be enrooted in education. Our project aims in the long run at preserving Romanes through fairy tales as relevant part of the cultural identity of Roma and at utilising it for intercultural and cross-generational learning and for improving basic skills. Because, whatvever Roma do and whereever they go, they only rarely have their own fairy tales. Roma fairy tales were not written down and therefore not picturised. They are neither to be found in their bookshelf nor in a book shop or on the internet. The low number of still present fairy tales are only existing in the heads of a few of storytellers. It is a question of time until they disappear as well...In the frame of the project, Roma fairy tales shall be tracked and collected in Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. Since no usual sources, such as archives or libraries, can be reverted to, the project partners will at first identify Roma who are known as story tellers and who obtain a treasure of legends, anecdotes and stories. Accordingly trained staff members of the partner organisations will then record the fairy tales, put them down on paper and translate them into English. After that, they shall be examined for similarities and differences and categorised by animal stories, magic stories, legends, anecdotes and aetiological stories. In a follow-up project, the selected fairy tales shall be translated into the mainly spoken Romanes-dialect and the national language of the partner countries and published as a European Roma fairy tale book.

„Solidarity is the tenderness of the peoples.“ (Ernesto Che Guevara) About 60 million people are currently refuging all over the world. They flee from war, political, religious and sexual persecution, hunger, nature catastrophes, risks due to climate change … Only after hundreds of thousands of people – particularly war refugees from Syria and the Arabic republics – started their way via the “Balkan route” to Europe, the subject “refugees” has been moving into the entire social focus and needs urgently a European solution. Even more, if we do not want to leave the field to the (right-wing) demagogues. However, a European solution requires transnational co-operation. According to the Geneva Convention for Refugees, each refugee has a free and unhindered access to courts, is free in the choice of his religion, shall receive access to lessons or studies, to medical treatment, social security and a passport and must not be discriminated in searching for a flat and a job. This means nothing else than the right for and the duty of integration, particularly for the refugees who have a perspective to stay in Europe. The challenges in the social integration of refugees are often the same. However, according researches that we did in advance of our project together with our partners showed that the biggest challenge is their integration into the labour market. According to that, the biggest thresholds are:- language barriers- psychological limits due to traumatic refuge experiences- generally difficult labour market situation (BG, ES, IT, TR)- work placement linked with a permanent address (HU)- labour market requirements strongly focussed on formal qualifications (DE, ES)- missing proofs for or non-recognition of Vocational Trainings or University degrees- decreasing employability due to a professional inactivity during the asylum procedure.This is completed by - cultural differences, different religions, diverging understanding of values- expectations, fears, prejudices and nescience – both of refugees and the majority- formalities, bureaucracy, duration of registration and asylum procedures The recording, assessing and recognition of competences relating to the integration of refugees in vocational training and employment is indispensable because with that they obtain tools for their professional orientation, career planning and increasing of their employability. Apart from the validation of competences, there is the need for additional basic integration offers that need to take effect after the recognition of asylum applications latest, such as language, alphabetisation and integration courses.This exactly was the starting point of our project! In the 16 months project duration, the partners from Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Turkey examined which integration offers are provided and successfully used in their countries.Besides, the partners detected what needs to be considered in the validation of the competences of refugees and which instruments are appropriate for the target group in order to make a quick integration in vocational training or employment possible. Last but not least, it was analysed in the frame of the Strategic Partnership how integration offers that are proven in practise depend on each other, which stakeholders need to be involved and in how far the offers obtain a European transfer potential. Refugees WelComB! aimed at: - analysing the actual situation of the social integration, particularly their integration in vocational training and employment through targeted researches, surveys and interviews with refugees in the partner countries- detecting how the competences of refugees are validated, if the French model of Competence Balance meets the special needs of refugees and how it must be modified for this purpose- identifying best practise examples with potential of European transfer- determining together with refugees, refugee organisations, experts and stakeholders the most urgent needs for action that can be covered with existing resources and targeted activities in the frame of European projects The results were recorded in a project booklet.