REF and CEI are meeting soon to exchange know-how on secondary school programs for Roma students.
REF and CEI are meeting soon to exchange know-how on secondary school programs for Roma students.
On 12th-13th of June 2018, in hotel Park, Belgrade, Serbia, Roma Education Fund and the Central European Initiative (CEI) are organizing the closing event under the project Professional intergovernmental Know-How Exchange on the implementation of large scale Secondary School Scholarship and Mentoring Program for Roma Students.
The main objective of the project, implemented since January 2017, was to strengthen the capacities of the educational ministries and civil society organizations which partner with the Roma Education Fund in managing the secondary scholarship program in 9 countries. The countries included were Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo* (non-member of CEI), Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia (non-beneficiary of CEI) and Slovakia (model country).
The main activities of the project were:
1. Capacity Building of 24 representatives of Secondary Scholarship project teams, with a focus on monitoring and evaluation tools.
2. Professional experience exchange among all project countries that participated.
3. Closing event (with focus on gender, sustainability and visibility).
4. Evaluation of the unified monitoring and evaluation tools and methodological guidelines for secondary scholarship program.
The upcoming Inter-ministerial and civil society Know-How Exchange meeting in Belgrade is the third in the series of events, aimed at providing space and opportunity for the participating countries to discuss sustainability and visibility of the REF’s Secondary Scholarship and Mentoring Program (SSMP), Monitoring and Evaluation mechanisms, and gender equality perspective and mainstreaming in SSMPs.
Only in 2017, REF Secondary Scholarship and Mentoring Program involved 279 municipalities and 1,089 secondary schools. In 2016/17, REF secondary school students’ GPA increased by an average of 6% – this is on top of the 7% improvement after REF intervention in 2015/16 and almost 90% of the secondary school beneficiaries completed the academic year.
The Program targeted 3,672 students in all nine countries with scholarships, as 1,663 of them received mentoring, while 1,429 received tutoring support.
To view the provisional agenda of the event click the document below.
*This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/1999 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.
