The PAL project (Fighting discrimination and anti-Gypsyism in education and employment in EU) aims to provide equal access to employment by raising awareness among young Roma and trainers working with Roma and by identifying new employment and vocational training opportunities.
As partner of this project, ALDA implemented local events for young Roma in Strasbourg to improve these employment opportunities for this population, which faces discrimination.
Two local events took place on the 15th and 29th of November. During these events it was the occasion for the Roma people living in Strasbourg to enhance their knowledge about job opportunities or trainings available here. The first day was dedicated to the improvement of their presentation skills, linguistic knowledge (including professional vocabulary) and an initiation to the digital-control machines with a creation of wooden toys.
The second event was planned as an exchange of professional and educational experiences of young Roma who shared with the others their carrier paths. Thanks to the presence of the professionals working in the field of training or professional integration, the group had also the possibility to extend their knowledge about different employment and training opportunities and take contacts with some of the integration enterprises. It was also the occasion to highlight manual work through wood sculpture machines and the creation of paper toys. One of the participant, Mihaela, a young Roma woman shared her life story and encouraged the other young Roma not to give up and to be active in their professional path. Mihaela, after many struggles, finally found stability in her life and she wishes to keep this educational path and to pass a diploma in higher education. She wants to become a chef and maybe in the future open her own restaurant. The main difficulty she had to go through was the language barrier especially because of the accent and people did not understand what she was saying. “But I was really lucky and the teachers helped me all along my learning”- she said. “I really encourage people to get information because even if we are far from our country there is a lot of things to do there. The main thing is to know how to overcome the difficulties but foremost what we want to do. I did not know what will happen in the future and it is not easy to think about it but it is worth it”.