Twinning activities for Roma integration
Twinnings are developed with local and regional authorities in order to lead concrete measures in Roma integration locally and encouraging the development of a EU wider network.
Roma in Anderlecht
The Anderlecht municipality has a population of 118,412 and is one of the most populated areas in Belgium. There is no official data, but according to reliable estimates more than 10,000 Roma live in the Brussels Capital Region, about 4,000 are Romanian and 3,500 are Bulgarian, and most live in Anderlecht.
Main challenges
The most pressing challenges for the Roma community in Anderlecht are:
- education
- exclusion from social support and healthcare
- working in the informal economy
- exploitation
Roma action plan
In 2014-2015 the municipality created an action plan for social inclusion of Roma families in Anderlecht with the objectives of improving knowledge and decreasing stereotypes of social workers and creating a better ethnic mix and stronger connections between all children in the municipality.
The action plan has been successful in putting the Roma issues on the agenda of social workers, and in mixing children from different communities in different projects for improving interactions between the social workers and the Roma families.
As a partner in the for Roma, with Roma initiative the municipality hopes to get a better insight into the life in the regions of origin and to better understand why some of the actions did not bring the expected results.