After hearing about the Roma people and discrimination they faced historically throughout our time in Germany, the issues that Roma people, especially women, face historically and contemporarily took center stage with our visit to Slovo 21 in Prague. With their founding in 1999 and “slovo” translating to “word”, the name Slovo 21 represented the change the organization wanted to bring to the Czech Republic in the 21st Century regarding its treatment of the Romani and refugees. The project-based organization works with mainly Romani communities as well as migrant communities on women’s empowerment, education, arts, social inclusion, and capacity building.
Their two largest projects are Khamoro and Manushe. Khamoro is the world’s largest professional Romani conference, drawing in 10,000 visitors to Prague annually for the past 26 years. For seven days, each day features a different musical theme as well as film screenings, dance, and storytelling sessions with the goal of connecting the Romani minority to the non-Roma majority through the arts. Manushe, which started as an informal group, has been running for 24 years, combatting stereotypes of Roma women and helping them build the skills to raise their self-esteem and self-advocate for their needs. The programs are run by regional coordinators who are Romani and have a deep understanding of the community’s needs as well as trust among its members.
These efforts are extremely necessary given the current state of the Czech Republic’s Roma population. As of 2014, the most recent data available, 11% of Roma women had a high school degree and 31% were employed. In comparison, 40% of Czech women held high school degrees and 62% were employed, double that of Roma women. This is deeply linked to the fact that over half of the Roma population in the Czech Republic lives in socially excluded areas that are inaccessible from cities and have little infrastructure for social welfare, employment, and housing. Additionally, many Roma children go to Roma only schools, further polarizing them and decreasing the ability for cultural exchange with the majority population.
This lecture was deeply eye opening for me as most, if not all, of the information was new to me. In the United States, we barely hear about the Roma people outside of a brief mention as another group impacted by the Holocaust. This knowledge gap exists in the Czech Republic too. No one is taught about the historic genocide and forced sterilization of the Roma, nor the contemporary systemic discrimination they face.
This is what makes the work of Slovo 21 so important. Not only are they working within Romani communities to amplify their voices and empower them to self-advocate, but they are also working with local Czech communities to bridge the aforementioned knowledge gap. They have showed Czech people documentaries highlighting the community organizing of Roma women through Slovo 21 as well as brought Czech and Roma women together to show the similarities in their discrimination and the amplified degree in which Roma women experience it. The less cross-cultural dialogue takes place, the more the “us versus them” mentality is solidified between these two communities, making change for Romani people impossible.
Slovo 21 is doing invaluable work for the Czech Republic and Roma communities. Even if larger systemic change has yet to be implemented, the change they’ve implemented in creating public space for Roma culture to be celebrated and for Roma women to learn to advocate for themselves has laid the foundation for the change they hoped to usher into the 21st century when they were founded in 1999.
Works Cited
“Khamoro 24.” https://www.vyletnik.cz/clanek/festival-khamoro-2024/
Klee, Natálie, and Claudie Laburdová. “Roma Women in the Czech Republic: Slovo
21/Manushe.”