The Lacho Drome Roma Center successfully started capacity building the local network of mediators in four towns across two Ukrainian regions (Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk). Two mediators in each of the four towns were trained toward in their communities monitoring and reporting cases of discrimination, hate crimes and hate speech towards Roma. These activities are part of a grant received from the European Union and Council of Europe anti-discrimination project in the Eastern Partnership.
The Lacho Drome educators managed to conduct all planned live training sessions before the lockdown in the Eastern Ukrainian region in March. Training participants gained knowledge and skills to understand human rights and will continue helping people in their communities to recognise and report such cases to appropriate authorities.
After the training all mediators undergo a series of networking meetings with local authorities, local police and local Ombudsman representatives to ensure they are equipped with all means successfully represent their communities and provide timely reaction to all reported cases of hate speech, discrimination or hate crimes in the region. As a result of these networking meetings, local action plans were developed for each town and all mediators are now engaged in its implementation and monitoring.
The Lacho Drome is inspired by the participants' feedback after training and by the engagement of local police and the Ombudsman representatives in drafting local actions plans and open discussions of problems and possible solutions, they believe this is the start of great cooperation which will lead to the empowerment of the local Roma community.
There are also already synergy effect activities emerging right after the start of the project. One month after the training and network meetings, two local initiative groups led by mediators decided to formalise their work and registered non-profit organisations (NGOs). Thus, the Association of Romani women “Luludi” in town Kamyanske and “Amare manusha” NGO in Dnipro city were registered. The Lacho Drome is very proud of such outcomes of their long term networking and capacity building activities on the regional level and hope all these efforts will help to improve Roma rights situation in the region.
These activities were organised as part of a project of Lacho Drome NGO supported through the project “Strengthening access to justice for victims of discrimination, hate crime and hate speech in Eastern Partnership countries”, funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe through their Partnership for Good Governance II (2019-2021).
