This Spring 2025, the Civic Engagement, Arts and Culture Unit at CEU-Budapest invited Roma Graduate Preparation Program participants to participate in an initative where they could engage in projects, that they develop and implement together in partnership with civil society organizations in Hungary. The initiative aimed at harnessing the talent and energy of students and young scholars to become change agents as they seek to identify, analyze, and address local and global issues of importance through their academic work linked directly with the community partners as contributors, collaborators, and beneficiaries. Eight of this year’s RGPP participants ran projects under this framework, with heartening and inspiring results.
RGPP participants Felicia Cristina Constantin, Bianca-Florina Neștian, and Ana Vitoria Amador Vargas teamed up to organize an on-line workshop entitled Claiming Space: Roma Women Challenging Barriers in Education and the Labor Market together with the Feminist Collective of Romani Gender Experts, an international organisation with members around the world. The initiative aimed to critically explore and challenge the systemic barriers faced by Roma women in education and the labor market. Through a dynamic interactive panel event, it aimed at collective reflection, visibility, and the creation of solidarity networks among Roma women, students, and stakeholders. The RGPP team’s tasks included outreach, Panelist Selection and Coordination, Promotion and Documentation. The online workshophad a significant outreach and ended up with 45 registants. Taking place on 2 June 2025 at 17:30, the event received excellent feedback from the participants who iterated how it had created a space for collective reflection and community building across lived experience, professional expertise, and advocacy as well as fostering a sense of collective agency.
RGPP participants Veronika Balogh and Katinka Mári participated in the work of the MARA Program, a joint initiative launched by Romaversitas and the EMMA Association which is aimed at encouraging community activism among Roma women in Hungary, while placing an emphasis on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). The RGPP team provided project consultation to the participants in the MARA program’s 10-week training program for Roma women on their final projects. The training participants are both driven to self-empowerment and promoting change in their communities focusing on topics such as sexual education, body positivity and bodily autonomy, contraception and reproductive health, women’s reproductive rights and healthcare access, intersectionality and social justice and LGBTQ+ inclusion and rights. The RGPP team were able to witness the fruits of community-based education, particularly when rooted in lived experience and collective empowerment.
RGPP participants Magdalena Sarandeva, Zoltán Turó, Ildikó Ignácz volunteered with the Roma Women Network providing organizational support for RWN Menstrual Hygiene Day (28 May 2025), a Neighbor Festival, and a Summer Conference. Their tasks included networking, fundraising, proposal writing, budgeting, running errands and crowdsourcing. The RGPP team also had the chance to, based on a local initiative, distribute a community questionnaire aimed at collecting input from residents on policy issues for the Budapest’s 9th district (Ferencváros) local government. The team had to chance to see how running an organization goes, from the ground up and participate in the process of turning a abstract concept into a live event.
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