Europe's Roma - Hard Travelling

"This year marks the halfway point of Europe’s “Decade of Roma Inclusion”, launched in 2005 at a riverside hotel in Budapest. Five years on, say activists, most Roma are still worse off than under communism, which, for all its faults, at least guaranteed work, housing and welfare, and stamped down on hate crimes. Today conditions in Roma settlements on the edges of town and villages rival Africa or India for their deprivation." The Economist.

"No government in eastern Europe with a substantial Roma minority has done much to deal with the discrimination they face or the hopeless poverty that keeps them excluded from the mainstream" the article quotes Rob Kushen of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre as saying.

It continues, "Europeans would be swift to condemn the plight of the Roma were they in any other part of the world. However, eastern European governments are unlikely suddenly to tackle a problem that dates back centuries just because Brussels tells them to."  >> read the full article

As the Proton Foundation continues to explore new opportunities, initially in Romania, to combat poverty and social exclusion, the plight of the Roma are sharply in focus for the Proton team.  In October the Project Development Team will return to Romania in order to tour 3 locations with the view to developing a new initiative to combat poverty through the provision of housing, employment and training, education and social services.

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