WUNRN
Interview by Dorota Kowalska
World Bank - Communications
From World Bank Staff Website
For
My Roma People - Marijana Jasarevic
November 7, 2008—Marijana Jasarevic, a 31-year old junior professional
in the Belgrade Country Office, knows what it feels like to fight for
equal opportunities, to rise above stereotypes and prejudices, and the
necessity to constantly prove oneself in the eyes of others.
One of Marijana's responsibilities in the Belgrade office is to liaise
with the Serbian government during its presidency of the Decade of
Roma Inclusion. In this interview, Marijana shares her experiences
working first-hand on Roma issues, and her personal goal—to advocate
for equal opportunities for her people, Europe's largest minority.
What was your experience growing up as a Roma in Serbia?
I come from Leskovac, a city in the southern part of Serbia, with a
total population of 80,000 people—30 percent of the total Roma
population in Serbia lives there. Leskovac, at one time an industrial
town with a well-developed textile industry, is 280 km from Belgrade.
My father was a musician, making his living playing the accordion at
weddings. He followed in the footsteps of his father, who was a
musician as well. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, taking care of me
and my older brother.
In contrast to other Roma families, my family lives in a Serbian
neighborhood. This has had its advantages and disadvantages. Growing
up in a Serbian neighborhood helped me learn Serbian, and I have been
speaking the language fluently since childhood. On the other hand, I
was often exposed to negative comments, stereotypes, and prejudices by
non-Roma children.
But because I spoke both Romany and Serbian since childhood, I did not
experience the kind of barriers for enrolling in primary school that
many Roma children do. My school was a regular neighborhood school for
both Roma and non-Roma children and, since I spoke Serbian well, I was
not left out of regular classes and I interacted with Serbian
classmates on a daily basis.
While the school environment was not entirely free of stereotyping and
discriminatory remarks, I was spared the fate of many Roma children
who were and still are being sent to special schools for children with
learning disabilities. This was my passport to life… my chance.
What prompted you to pursue your education beyond primary and secondary school?
I had a great role model in my family—my uncle—who graduated from the
police academy and retired as a police inspector. Both of my parents
finished only primary school, but they have always been very
supportive of my dreams to continue my education, and it was my uncle
whom I looked up to as an achiever when I was growing up.
We need more role models in our Roma communities, to motivate Roma
children to not give up on education, to inspire them with examples of
people who made it from within our own communities. I would love to
see more Roma teachers in both primary and secondary schools encourage
Roma youth to believe in themselves.
I am the first college graduate in my family. I knew very well that
high school would not give me the necessary qualifications for a job,
and that a college degree is the only way to succeed in life
professionally.
In 2003, I graduated from Belgrade University with a major in history
from the philosophy faculty. Now I know that I was not the only Roma
from my generation to pursue a university degree, but while growing up
I had never met one. I was also the only Roma at the history
department at the university.
Upon receiving my degree, I had an eye-opening experience in the two
years I spent working for a Roma NGO in Belgrade that focused on
educational programs for internally displaced Roma children. This
experience prompted me to continue my education and to specialize in
human rights at the Central European University in Budapest.
What was your experience with the Roma children in a segregated school?
The Roma NGO I worked for in Belgrade was running a program in one of
the local primary schools. Under the project, I worked as a
supplemental teacher, tutoring children who were not performing well
in regular classes. More than 80 percent of the school's students were
Roma children so, therefore, it was considered a segregated school.
None of the Roma children in the school could speak any Serbian. The
majority of them were internally displaced from Kosovo, and some were
returning from Germany. Our task as tutors was to teach various
classes to them in Serbian after regular school hours. I taught
history, geography, Serbian, and English at that school.
Working with the Roma children reconfirmed what I had already
known—that even if they wanted to continue their education, they
couldn't, because their parents were so poor they could not afford to
buy them textbooks, school supplies, nor clothes.
In any case, the children were unable to enroll in secondary school
because they could simply not pass the test. This was due to the much
lower quality of education they were receiving, compared to the much
higher educational standards in mainstream schools.
In addition, their living conditions were horrible. Some of these
families moved to their relatives' homes, and many constructed shacks
in illegal settlements, like the Gazala one situated in the heart of
Belgrade across the street from the Hyatt and Intercontinental hotels.
According to the most recent surveys, there are 600 Roma settlements
in Serbia, 70 percent of which are illegal.
What personal stories did you hear from the children?
The families of the children were so poor that sometimes a child would
disappear from school for 2-3 weeks at a time. We would later find out
that the reason for this was that the children had to work with their
parents to collect paper and waste so that the family could survive.
Many of them were very poorly dressed in the wintertime. Some were
coming to school in their summer shoes on cold winter days. I also
noticed a pattern: the school schedule was such that older children,
from 5th to 8th grades, had classes in the morning, while the children
between the 1st and 4th grades (7–11 years) had classes scheduled in
the afternoon. However, I found that the younger children were also
coming early in the morning—they did not have heating at home, so they
were coming to school to warm themselves up. They used to stay at
school for 8–10 hours on cold days.
And this is why, among other things, I decided to study human rights
at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. I initially
wanted to be a history teacher, but when my job application was
rejected by a school director in one of Belgrade's high schools on the
basis of my ethnicity, I decided to do something different.
Studying human rights at the Legal Studies Department at the CEU in
Hungary made me believe that I can make a difference in the future,
and that through my work I can help my people overcome the social
constraints and discrimination they face.
I then realized that I would want somehow to help not only the
children, like those I met in the segregated school, but also Roma in
general. I could see that education is key—if one has education, one
also has a much larger chance to improve one's social status.
In addition, my internship with the European Roma Rights Center in
Hungary, prior to the onset of my studies at the CEU, exposed me to a
range of issues in Roma communities in Kosovo, Hungary, and Serbia.
Some of the most interesting and revealing work I was involved in was
a survey I conducted in the eastern part of Hungary on health issues
among the Roma women. I saw marginalized Roma settlements, a rather
typical sight across the Central Europe, with a railroad or a bridge
running across the village and a disheveled Roma settlement situated
on the left side of the road and a non-Roma prosperous part of the
village on the right.
Ambulances hardly ever made it to the Roma side, and a local emergency
unit would not answer the calls from the Roma calling for help in an
emergency situation. I also saw a local hospital in which doctors
would not want to treat pregnant Roma women because of prejudice and
discrimination, leading to cases of pregnant women losing their
babies, unable to get the health service they desperately needed. The
hospital also created a segregated section for Roma women only,
separating them from other patients and providing less than adequate
healthcare services.
The launch of the Decade of Roma Inclusion symbolized the formal
recognition of Roma's alarming situation in Europe and the need for
action at a national level, as well as the inter-regional cooperation
to ensure the integration of Roma into mainstream society.
We can now see some positive developments at the EU level too. The
European Roma Summit in September demonstrated that the Roma issue is
also part of the EU agenda, and that the European Commission takes
part of the responsibility for Europe's largest minority.
What is your life motto, and where do you see yourself in ten years?
My motto would be: "Don't get discouraged if you don't succeed doing
something the first time around. Don't give up, just try again." As
for my plans for the future, I am grateful for the opportunity given
to me to work at the World Bank office in Belgrade.
My colleagues here are great and I am happy to work with such a nice
and inspiring group of professionals. Within the next ten years, I
see myself working in an international organization where I can make a
real difference by impacting state policies on Roma and ensuring equal
opportunities for my people.
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