RomABC goes Western Balkan - Adaptation and development of innovative instruments for combating functional illiteracy of Roma in Serbia and North Macedonia

"""Whe nyo ur eadt hi ste xty ouk no whow itfe elsi fyo uc ann otr eadp rop er ly."" (source of the German text: ""Grundbildung in Europa: Projekte und Perspektiven"", NA BIBB).According to UNESCO, an estimated number of 73 million adult Europeans are considered as functional illiterates. This is equal to 1/5 of the employable population aged 18 to 64 years. In the partner countries of the project this concerns totally 13.8 million adults. According to experts the share of functional illiterates among adult Roma there is 40 to 60 per cent. Comparibly high is the share among the 25 to 40 year old Roma. Thus, often functional illiteracy is the reason for the hindered access of Roma to education and employment. It also hinders the maintenance or increasing of their employability.Alphabetisation measures are mainly offered for the majority population and partially for migrants, but not particularly for Roma. This is necessary to consider their special needs in the improvement of their reading and writing skills. Existing offers lack co-ordination and interdisciplinary co-operation in the planning and implementation. Binding respectively uniform quality standards are completely missing. Therefore, - the elaboration of a Curriculum for raising the literacy grade of adult Roma - the modification of Quality Standards for according alphabetisation courses- the development of a Handbook for leaders of alphabetisation courses and- the designing and implementation of Co-ordination Concepts for alphabetisation measures are in the centre of our project. In an according training, adult education experts will be enabled to use them for the first time already within the test phase of the project. ""RomABC goes Western Balkan"" will be realised by partners from Serbia, North Macedonia, Germany and Hungary and aims particularly at the reduction of the number of functional illiterates among adult Roma, the improvement of their employability and the increasing of their participation in adult education measures. With that, the project contributes in the long run concretely to the increasing of the employment rate and the reduction of the number of Roma concerned by poverty and social exclusion."