Roma SMILE is a project financed from the Lifelong Learning Programme dealing with the subject of social inclusion of Roma. The idea of the whole project is to approach the problem in a holistic manner through the establishment of educational community that will actively provide concrete answers and solutions to problems.
One of the main goals of SMILE is to support the primary schools in their effort of involving Roma students, creating a welcoming learning environment for the Roma children and families and developing a sense of community through the foundation of a new spirit of Community feeling, based on the concept of “prosociality”. Among the specific objectives of SMILE there is the realization of a didactic scheme (the Prosocial Community Inclusion Model ‐ PCIM) addressed to create or reinforce the students’ positive perception of the diversity and to establish shared “prosocial” teaching and learning rules for developing a pedagogical reference scheme, thus considering the specific issue of Roma inclusion through the reinforcement of the social competences. In this perspective, the integration is an issue of all the Education Community.
SMILE also intends to create a formal cooperation among the communities where the students live, Educating Communities which will represent a formal agreement involving all the Institutions or associations, Roma and Gage which are points of reference in the education of students. The project will be implemented by six partner organizations – Centro Studi e Formazione Villa Montesca (IT), Associazione Italiana Zingari Oggi (IT), City of Koprivnica (HR), The BHA (UK), ADRIA BULGARIA Foundation (BG), European Roma Information Office (BE). The project, which started in 2013, will last until October 31st 2015, and is co-financed by the European Union.
To learn more about the Roma SMILE project, please click here.