This Program is, among other things, an answer to one of the most important questions for our community: where is our place in Europe and in this society?
NENAD VLADISAVLJEV – Association of Roma Students‘’This Program is, among other things, an answer to one of the most important questions for our community: where is our place in Europe and in this society? We will get the answer by creating a specific staff, a specific profession, something like a Roma brand, something by which people will recognize the Roma on the European level. As Indians are recognized in the IT sphere, the idea is that the Roma are recognized as medical staff. For two reasons: demand for medical staff in the world is rising and it is the way to discredit the usual picture people have of the Roma as someone who is dirty, illiterate and ill. Therefore, the fact that the Roma are doctors will break that prejudice and result in the long-term betterment for the Roma community’’, says Nenad Vladisavljev from the Association of Roma Students.
What obstacles do Roma students meet?
Every Roma student, when coming to the faculty, faces enormous, inner, psychological barriers. We have another kind of problem in relation to other students. Until that moment you have never had a chance even to hear what an index is, what a colloquium is, and in most cases, not even to have anyone in the family who ever studied. On the other hand, when you study, you adopt certain value principles, certain behaviour patterns, and then, when you go back to your community, you find yourself in the situation that you are blamed for having changed because you do some things which compromise your Roma identity in the community. It is not the Roma way. We, the Roma, solve this situation in two ways. One is to assimilate and try to run away from the Roma community. Another is to say to oneself: I do not belong here; I will go back home and be like all other Roma. Our task as the Association of Roma Students is to help these inner conflicts so that they are solved in a positive way and that all students are psychologically consolidated with their community.
What are their dilemmas most often?
They wonder: what are they supposed to do now, where do they belong, what does it actually mean to be a Roma; how to remain a Roma on one side and be educated and behave differently on the other? What is it in their community they should forsake? Which are the negative elements in their traditional cognition of life? How to get in the position to trust oneself? To be the one who will tell the Roma community: Folks, I assume responsibility as an intellectual for the future of my community! We shouldn’t go this way, but another one, a better one…
What is the role of the Association of Roma Students in that?
The duty of the Association is in the advocacy component: to open these questions and help they remain what they really are, but also to consider together with them what they can do for their community. We do not expect that they all become activists, that they all work in non-governmental organizations, but we expect they keep their attachment to the Roma community through their professional work, speak openly that they are Roma and do their best in their field of activity. To that end, we organize schools where they can meet, get to know one another, talk about such topics, hear some things about Roma history, hear some other people, older and more experienced than they are, Roma intellectuals who made achievements in their professional careers, listen about something that is specifically related to the Roma health which they probably cannot hear at the faculties. The mentors guide them through the themes which are not directly related to the matters studied at the faculties, which are rather the themes related to Roma life and health.
And when they finish school, we offer them an opportunity to practise all the skills they acquired, to apply some of that locally, in their own environment. After that, they gather in their communities, recognize greater problems when Roma health is concerned and try to solve them. Thus, we try to link them to the Roma community so that they remain active even when they become medical professionals.
Nevertheless, when they finish schools and faculties, it is difficult for the Roma to find jobs…
We have 11 students, the scholarship beneficiaries, who finished Higher Vocational School of Medicine in Ćuprija, Belgrade and Novi Sad. Only three out of 11 of them work in their profession, the others have been unemployed for years. I think the next step is actually an activity at affirmative measures for employment of educated Roma. We cannot say there is no political will; rather, there is no political courage to employ the Roma by affirmative measures. And it is a wonderful message that is missing in our case now, despite all the efforts. We, as the people, have qualified staff now, but we are still the least represented in the institutions; and that will be the priority in the ensuing period.
