Vivien is Hungarian coming from Kalocsa, a little settlement in Southern part of the country. Though she dreamt of becoming a painter until the year before her high school graduation, in the end she decided to apply to the Faculty of Law, Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest). She graduated in July, 2015 and came to RGPP with the goal to be accepted to a Human Rights LMA or MA.
“I grew up in a Roma household and received my primary and secondary school education in this same small city. I am very much a Roma woman with close ties to family and the Roma community, with a direct relationship to Roma culture, art that has from an early age been mongrelized (in a good sense, as Salman Rushdie phrased it) by my interest in all western cultures and specifically towards modern and contemporary art, literature and music.
I first developed a passion for human rights as an undergraduate at Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences - Faculty of Law. My time studying fundamental rights and human rights at ELTE and working at a law firm - where I have dealt with submissions to the European Court of Human Rights - hugely influenced my worldview, convincing me to work at the intersection of access to legal services.
The Roma Graduate Preparation Program is a huge opportunity to be trained at an advanced level in specific fields of study in order to continue post-graduate studies and to meet my professional goals. After the Roma Graduate Preparation Program I would like to apply to the Human Rights LLM at the Central European University or to another Human Rights LLM or MA at a different university. I think that after the Preparation Program I will have a better chance of acceptance. During a human rights LLM or MA I hope that I can learn and further develop a critical approach to development and human rights and hone my skills to be a better human rights advocate. After graduation from the human rights LLM or Master, I would like to work at an NGO which deals with international human rights, with a particular emphasis on the discrimination of the Roma people. I can imagine myself as a person who does advocacy, especially on the access to education, and provides legal services to them."