Bujanovac, Vranje – “Thanks to the raised awareness of parents about the importance of education, the number of Roma children in Vranje and Bujanovac, who drop out of school due to the going away of their parents to other parts of Serbia for seasonal work, has dropped," said Zvezdan Ramic, Head of the Roma Cultural Center, at the roundtable for the Roma activists that was organized at the hall of the Municipal Authorities of Pcinj District in Vranje.

Kenan Rasitovic, Head of the Youth Forum for Roma Education (OFER) NGO in Bujanovac, said that, apart from parental role, the operation of the competent institutions, primarily of the Center for Social Work, was of key importance for overcoming the problem. 

“The role of institutions is crucial in the efforts to raise the awareness of parents about their not going to work to Vojvodina, as well as to the central and western parts of Serbia, and about not interrupting the education of their children, which was particularly noticeable in children who attended the sixth, seventh and eighth grades of elementary school," Mr. Rasitovic said.

The conclusion reached at the round table was to have an influence on the operation of the relevant institutions in solving the problems of Roma children and to appropriately cover the issue by the media. 

The round table entitled "Stop Child Labor" was held as part of the project implemented by the Open Society Foundation, the Roma Cultural Center from Vranjska Spa and the Youth Forum for the Education of Roma (OFER) from Bujanovac.

Source: Vranjske and Coordination Body