Fourth meeting of the “Local Platform for Roma”

On 20^th September 2016 in Sisak, the Civil Rights Project Sisak organized the fourth meeting of the “Local Platform for Roma”. “Local Platform for Roma” is the coordination body that has been created as an activity of the project “The Importance of Being Roma”, the project that has been implemented from 1^st November 2015 – 31^st October 2016, financed by the European Union, with the co-financing by the Croatian Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs. Besides the work meeting, the Platform has been working continuously, and has implemented a lot of different activities and actions towards all relevant institutions, depending on problems that were related to intervention.

After the first three meetings, where the themes were status issues, education of Roma and living conditions in Roma settlements and housing of the members of Roma national minority, the theme of this meeting was one of the biggest problem for Roma – the employment.

The meeting was opened with the presentation of work of the Platform in the first 10 months of work and so far achieved goals of the project implementation. The presentation of the stakeholders and discussion followed.

Because of the theme, this meeting gathered the most different stakeholders. The most important things that Roma representatives learned were the possibilities of education, employment, and self-employment that were presented by the representatives of Croatian Chamber of Trades and Craft and Croatian Chamber of Economy. Also the representatives of the Industrial-trade school and Croatian Employment Service presented the jobs that were attractive for young Roma population and special programs for employment that were created for Roma population and guaranteed positive discrimination of Roma.

This meeting, as those that had already been organized, gave concrete conclusions and quality information to all stakeholders. Although it was the last meeting of the Platform, present and future activities of all stakeholders are guarantee that work on promotion and protection of rights of national minorities will be continued.