Launch of the Roma Women Empowerment Campaign
The ERGO Network and its members from Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Turkey proudly launched the Roma Women Empowerment campaign under the banner Our Place, Our Space, Our case. The campaign invests in the empowerment of grassroots Roma women to interact and participate in their democracies to become equal citizens, while keeping their identity. It also has an on-line component on the Roma React website (www.romareact.org) to visualize the places, spaces and cases of Roma women in their societies. The campaign is part of Roma Women Empowerment project (2012-2013) supported by the IPA programme of DG Enlargement and the MATRA programme of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Our Place, Our Space, Our Case stands for women that invite people to their ‘place’, who visualise their ‘space’ and who formulate their ‘case’ for improvement to relevant policy makers and stakeholders.
Ruus Dijksterhuis, Executive Director of the ERGO Network stressed that through this campaign Roma women will be empowered to have the strength required for controlling their own lives by becoming visible change makers within their communities and by raising their voices to influence policies and programmes affecting them.
Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Union in charge of the Digital Agenda emphasized in her welcoming message that the use of ICT skills can bring about real changes in the reality of Roma women. Representatives of DG Regio and DG Enlargement from the European Commission along with Kinga Goncz, Member of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament have warmly welcomed the launch of the campaign and highlighted the potential the Roma Women Empowerment campaign has in achieving tangible results with the integration of Roma women.
RomaReact.org, the interactive multimedia mapping platform of the campaign received a donation of 1,000 Euros from VP Neelie Kroes. In order to start generating traffic, members of the ERGO Network decided to launch an online competition on the platform in the following months where the user submitting the most engaging story will receive the `Neelie Kroes Award` with the cash prize.
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