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.

"With 10 to 12 Million, Roma are the biggest ethnic minority of Europe. A relevant reason for their permanent discrimination is their low education level. After the obligation to go to school, the participation of Roma in education decreases clearly. Only about 15 per cent finalise the secondary level II. Less than 20 per cent of Roma obtain a finalized vocational training. Only 2 to 5 per cent of all Roma attend a highschool. Less than 5 per cent of all Roma are University graduates. Their unemployment rate is in average higher than 70 per cent, the one of women is even higher. Much more dramatic – even it is not so much noticed in society – is the situation in the field of entrepreneurship. EU-wide, about 15.1 per cent of all people in paid work are self-entrepreneurs (solo-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs with staff). Although a readiness for starting-up a business exists also among Roma, their share within self-employers is so low that there is no statistics about them in the partner countries. Estimations of experts say it is lower than 1 per cent. Opposite to that, more and more people with migration background go their way into entrepreneurship. The share of this group among the entrepreneurs has increased in the last years, despite of the crisis. In Germany for example, each Third migrant opens his own business. This shows that the way into entrepreneurship is a serious alternative to unemployment and that it contributes relevantly to combating poverty and social exclusion, and to promoting lifelong learning and social participation. In the frame of ""A new ENTRance"", the project partners from Germany, Greece, Hungary and Romania have generated high quality Curricula for adult education that make the implementation of entrepreneurship courses for Roma possible with consideration of education and labour market as well as target group specific needs. The Curricula are not only available in German, Greek, Hungarian and Romanian but also in English and Romanes which promotes both the implementation of the entrepreneurship training courses with the target group and the transfer into other European countries. During the Pilot Training that was implemented within the project, experienced and accordingly qualified education actors from the partner countries were enabled to implement entrepreneurship training courses for Roma as trainers what they did for the first time within the Test Phases in Germany, Greece, Hungary and Romania. The development of an Online Self-evaluation Tool for examining the appropriateness as entrepreneur, that is not only available for the target group of Roma but all potential entrepreneurs on http://roma.entre.gr/, ensures the inclusion of ICT competences and responds this way to the digital era in adult education. The project contributes concretely to the EU Framework for National Strategies for the Integration of Roma until 2020 and the according National Strategies of the partner countries."