With 10 to 12 million members, Roma are the biggest ethnic minority in Europe. Opposite to the majorities, Roma do not have their own land and – with limits – also no national identity. What unites them beyond borders of the countries they live in, are their myths, habits and traditions. For the preserving and further development of their cultural identity, their language – Romanes – is indispensable. At the beginning of their migration from India, Romanes (actually Romani – coming from romani chip, „Roma language“) was still a common language. The long way that has been leading Roma for centuries over different continents and countries finally to Europe, but also their often long stay in those countries caused that Romanes fell apart in different dialects. Through the years, more and more words of the according country language were taken over into Romanes or the respective dialects. In a few European countries, e.g. Romania and Spain, it was forbidden for Roma for a long duration of time to speak their own language. This has also contributed to the loss of the common language. Until the younger past, Romanes was mainly only a spoken and orally inherited language. Unfortunately, until today no successfully standardised Romanes exists. Besides, it is written in several alphabets – Latin, Cyrillic and Devanagari. Despite all that, about 4.5 million Roma living in Europe speak Romanes. It is recognised in Macedonia and Kosovo as official regional language and in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary and Romania as minority language. Due to the century lasting social and cultural stigmatization and discrimination of Roma and their language, the use of Romanes as literature and stage language was prevented. This lead to the fact that Romanes could never really be anchored in education. In adult education it plays almost no role at all. With consideration of the fact that the participation of Roma in education after the obligatory school decreases relevantly, it gets clear that adult education is for many Roma older than 18 years the only possibility to educated themselves further, to balance education deficits and – even if late – to participate in lifelong learning. Therefore, our project aimed at preserving Romanes in the long run as relevant part of the cultural identity of Roma and to utilise it for concrete offers of adult education. The two years Strategic Partnership for the exchange of good practice will be realised by organisations from Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, North Macedonia and Romania.

"“Language is the roadmap of a culture. It tells you where its people came from and where they are going.” Rita Mae Brown“The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Ludwig WittgensteinLanguage is bearer of sense and descent, key to understand the world and oneself as well as central means of interpersonal comprehension. 10 – 12 Million Roma live in Europe; about 4.3 Million in the partner countries of our project: 185.000 in North Macedonia, 750.000 in Bulgaria, 120.000 in Germany, 175.000 in Greece, 600.000 in Hungary, 3.350 in Lithuania, 1.95 Mio. in Romania and 500.000 in Serbia (Statista 2019). At the beginning of their migration from India, Romanes (actually Romani - coming from romani chip, ""Roma-language"") was still a common language. The long way that has been leading Roma for centuries through different continents and countries finally to Europe, but also the long stay in those countries, caused that Romanes fell apart into different dialects. Over the years, more and more words of the according national languages were integrated in the Romanes or the respective dialects. In a few European countries, e.g. Romania and Spain, Roma were not allowed for a long time to speak their own language. This contributed also to the loss of the common language. Until the younger past, Romanes was mainly an only spoken and orally inherited language. Unfortunately, until today no successfully standardised Romanes exists. Besides, it is written with several alphabets - Latin, Cyrillic and Devanagari. Nowadays, language scientists group Romanes in four main and more than 60 sub-dialects.However, the key challenges of preservation and development of Romanes remain in its infrequent use. The problems of learning and preserving Romanes are crystallised in the lack of high-quality teaching of Romanes, the shortage of producers of learning material, and the language's invisibility in public activities. For example, play and activity material, didactic books and fairy tale books for children are almost non-existent. Therefore, it is the aim of the project “PROUD I” to find out if an online platform for Romanes would be a reasonable tool for both preserving Romanes as part of the Roma’s cultural identity and enabling them to participate in lifelong learning."

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ― Albert EinsteinReading fairy tales to children or storytelling does not only lay a foundation stone of literacy development but relates also to various cross-cultural values and behaviours. Studies also show that regular storytelling activities can help broaden a child’s vocabulary. The imagination of children is promoted when they are listening to fairy tales. Fairy tales contribute to preserving language, habits and traditions.With 10 to 12 million, Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe.Opposite to majority societies, Roma do not have their own land and - with limitations - also no national identity. What unites them beyond the borders of the countries they are living in are their myths, habits and traditions. For preserving and developing their cultural identity further, their language - Romanes - is indispensable. Due to the century long social and cultural stigmatisation and discriminiation of the Roma and their language, the usage of Romanes as literature and stage language was avoided. This led to the situation that Romanes could not really be enrooted in education. Our project aims in the long run at preserving Romanes through fairy tales as relevant part of the cultural identity of Roma and at utilising it for intercultural and cross-generational learning and for improving basic skills. Because, whatvever Roma do and whereever they go, they only rarely have their own fairy tales. Roma fairy tales were not written down and therefore not picturised. They are neither to be found in their bookshelf nor in a book shop or on the internet. The low number of still present fairy tales are only existing in the heads of a few of storytellers. It is a question of time until they disappear as well...In the frame of the project, Roma fairy tales shall be tracked and collected in Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. Since no usual sources, such as archives or libraries, can be reverted to, the project partners will at first identify Roma who are known as story tellers and who obtain a treasure of legends, anecdotes and stories. Accordingly trained staff members of the partner organisations will then record the fairy tales, put them down on paper and translate them into English. After that, they shall be examined for similarities and differences and categorised by animal stories, magic stories, legends, anecdotes and aetiological stories. In a follow-up project, the selected fairy tales shall be translated into the mainly spoken Romanes-dialect and the national language of the partner countries and published as a European Roma fairy tale book.