Education instead of begging: Rotary Club Ried gives Roma children a perspective

2023-05-30 04:10:00

The Rotary Club Ried has been supporting a social project in Serbia for three years. It aims to enable children from Roma families to break the spiral of poverty through education. The aid is well spent, as representatives of the service club found out during a visit to Serbia.

The Aleksinac region in southern Serbia is characterized by great poverty – a result of the collapse of the mining industry a few decades ago. Roma families are particularly affected: Many children do not go to school, they have to beg or work as scrap collectors. Due to a lack of future opportunities, many young people emigrate.

Bright spots in a dreary environment

Since 2020, the Rieder Rotarians have been supporting a social project of Caritas Beograd in cooperation with Caritas Austria in addition to numerous aid projects in the Ried area. For example, the club enabled school transport and healthy school snacks for more than 100 children from Roma settlements – often the only meal of the day for the children. The RC Ried is currently supporting an “IT Learning Center” for elementary school students from troubled schools in Aleksinac by purchasing laptops and paying two teachers.

So far, with the support of the Rotary Foundation, around 30,000 euros have flowed into the project, which is to be continued in the next club year.

During a visit to southern Serbia, a delegation from RC Ried found out that the money is being carefully managed and well invested. “Thanks to the great commitment of the local actors, the project enables rays of hope in an environment of high unemployment, illiteracy and oppressive poverty,” reports Friedrich Renner, who, as the person responsible for community services at RC Ried, launched the initiative. “Education is one of the key areas in Rotary’s project work, because education creates future prospects for children and young people. Our club project in Aleksinac is a small contribution to solving big problems,” said Club President Rudolf Gruber, summarizing the insights gained from the on-site visit.