To promote the social inclusion of Roma by strengthening the capacity and readiness of public institutions at the national, regional, county and municipality level to work together with Roma representatives for solving specific problems faced by Roma communities.
The Specific Objectives of this project were the following:
• Institution building at national and regional level to improve cooperation amongst stakeholders: ministries, national agencies, Roma representatives, regional development, employment and Roma authorities in order to develop the capacity to implement and monitor Roma social inclusion measures and to manage and absorb the European Union (EU) funds (consequent stages of the multi-annual programme for minorities but also structural funds (SF));
• Institution building at county level to support the development of the multi-sectorial working groups including all relevant stakeholders involved in the implementation and monitoring of strategy for Roma and, also, to increase the capacity of the county authorities to absorb EU funds;
• Institution building at local level to improve cooperation amongst stakeholders involved in the implementation and monitoring of Roma social inclusion measures and, also, to increase the capacity of the local authorities to absorb the EU funds;
• Assess the situation of socially excluded persons and communities and develop a methodology to solve the problems due to lack of identity and/or civil status and/or dwelling property papers;
• Implement a public awareness campaign focused on Roma issues, aimed at Roma as well as to the general public and opinion formatters;
• Capacity of structures involved at all levels in the implementation of the Strategy to manage, monitor, and evaluate is greatly increased: strategy implementation mechanism reorganised at all levels for increased efficiency, monitoring, and evaluation system operational;
• Capacity of public sector and Roma representatives from all levels to develop joint plans and work in partnerships is substantially increased: county work plans developed, 160 functional local partnerships established;
• Capacity of the institutions from national, regional, county and local level to absorb EU funds based on projects designed for and to be implemented together with Roma communities is developed: 5 large scale integrated Roma inclusion projects designed and other 200 integrated Roma inclusion projects designed for smaller communities;
• A map of communities at risk of social exclusion and a detailed situation of persons without Identity Documents (ID), civil status and property papers produced. A methodology to solve the different types of problems related to ID, civil status or property documents was developed;
• Perceptions of the Roma by the majority population were improved;
• Roma awareness of their rights and obligations increased.