In the territory of Bologna, the Srap Project has joined an existing network made up of other projects and organizations dealing with Roma and Sinti people in both local and international level.

In particular, 27 to 29 September 2011 a meeting was held in Bologna in Roma-net project, which was attended by all the staff of Srap. This meeting was a platform for exchange and discussion among all present realities.

Here follows a summary of the three days meetings.

The Roma-net project, started in November 2009 and financed by the European Union through URBACT, a European exchange and learning programme promoting sustainable urban development. The Bologna meeting was included in the cluster 3 of the project “Building a transnational labour market”.

The meeting was opened by the greetings and wishes of the representatives of Bologna municipality, giving then the way to various local associations and cooperatives that work with Roma and Sinti people in the town.

Among the others, Centro Accoglienza La Rupe and Società Dolce spoke about their 3 years management experience in the 3 camps that exist nowadays in the town. These two organizations highlighted strong points, weaknesses end possible future developments of their work, underlining advances done so far and new aims established. Centro Accoglienza La Rupe has further briefly introduced its training courses for operators that work in this field, necessary to improve the work in the camps and offer a better expertise and capability to influence both inner and external society.

The three days went on under the careful supervision of Ann Morton Hyde and the guide of Alan Kay and Jackie Scutt which led the participants throughout the work collectively or in small groups  and offered various examples of case studies, extremely useful to draw the best from the good practices presented. So, participants had the occasion to take cue from the CREATE project from Liverpool (community recycling enterprise and training for employment) and The Wise Group project from Glasgow (that works in the Intermediate Labour Markets).

The second day was partially dedicated to visit a camp in Bologna and a training course that involves a lot of Roma kids. Very interesting then was the intervention of FSG – Fundacion Segretariado Gitano wich presented the ACCEDER Programme, so successful in Spain.

Last of all, the meeting was a good occasion to encounter in person many operators that work with Roma and Sinti people in different European countries, allowing them to get in touch for the first time with successful projects, otherwise very difficult to track down. The organization was efficient and offered a lot of informal moments in which to strengthen also relationships and face to face conversations. Unfortunately the schedule was very intense and there was no time left to deal some topics with the needed depth and, despite the excellent job done by translators, speech differences has made it harder to exchange immediately one’s experiences. Anyhow the Bologna meeting represented a further step on in the creation of a stable net of organizations and operators and offered a good change to improve expertises and better work techniques otherwise impossible to achieve.