Eva Sopková

Eva Sopková has developed a multifaceted program to empower Roma (gypsy) communities to address some of the most chronic problems they face - poor academic performance, high unemployment, and the placement of Roma orphans in foster homes.

Eva Sopková has developed a grassroots community development program that recognizes the inner capacity of the Roma (gypsy) communities of Slovakia and Central and Eastern Europe to transform themselves and provide community services that the state is either unable or unwilling to provide. With a program that addresses high rates of departure from school, chronic unemployment, and a lack of social services, she is providing essential training for them to reach their potential and break a cycle of poverty fueled by those problems. Beginning with Roma mothers, whom she is teaching how to prepare their young children for school, she trains members of the community to provide educational and social services to their peers, thus improving the quality of community life, generating employment opportunities, and teaching marketable skills.

Romas represent eight percent of the Slovak population and constitute the second largest minority in Slovakia. Despite the fact that the Roma have lived in this region for centuries, their culture and behavioral patterns differ considerably from the dominant culture, and, historically, they have faced considerable prejudice and discrimination at the hands of their European neighbors. They are still typically denied access to education and employment and have remained on the margins of society. During the Soviet era the Roma were subjected to an ambitious social experiment aimed at integrating them into the mainstream. This experiment both failed in its main goal of integration and succeeded in eroding traditional economic and social patterns within Roma communities, contributing, in the end, to a complete dependency on the welfare system. Thus, the recent cuts in social welfare programs have left the Roma in desperate situations, affected by the highest unemployment rates in the region and by illiteracy, poverty, and high incidences of poverty related illnesses.

Eva developed her ideas during her work in a counseling center. She realized that neither that center nor any other existing institutions were capable of implementing their programs alone. She established the Pro Family Foundation to carry out her ideas and mobilize broad-based support from schools, job centers, and government social departments as well as from other citizens' organizations and the general public.

Eva's project consists of three interconnected elements. First, she addresses the high drop out rates of Roma children in their first years of school. She developed a preschool program that teaches them skills that are necessary for success in the first year and that are missing in the traditional training imparted in Roma families. This is her most developed program, and it is reaching its expansion stage. Eva has trained several instructors and arranged for a free space in a local school. She focuses on training mothers how to teach their children; mothers and children visit the school once a week, and mothers are instructed about how to work with their children during the next week. They are also given teaching aids to assist them. Families suitable for the programs are identified by the volunteers from the Roma community. The program not only helps children but also provides meaningful activity for unemployed mothers. The most experienced of them are able to become professional instructors working with other mothers in their communities. Eva began with a local program with a group of 60 children and achieved substantial improvement in children's performance in schools. Aware that conditions for the program might not be so favorable in other places, she is developing different forms of the program including a "mobile version," to equip instructors who visit smaller Roma communities, and a "home version" that provides mothers with manuals and video tapes or local TV broadcasts. She also is negotiating with the school authorities to establish the program as an integral part of state nursery schools in the areas with Roma populations.

Second, she works with young, unemployed Roma people without any job skills. Most Roma youth do not achieve a secondary education. Without any skills or education they are unable to compete on the job market or even to participate in retooling programs. Thus they are sentenced to long-term unemployment before they have ever started any job. As a psychologist, Eva knows that even when these young people are not realistic candidates for formal education, they are clever and capable of playing important roles in their cultural environment. She designed a special modular program that does not require long-term commitment and that trains young Romas as paraprofessionals who can deliver important missing services in Roma communities such as home health care aid and trash removal.

Third, Eva is developing a system that encourages Roma families to foster Roma orphans. Most of the children in the state orphanages are Roma: white people usually refuse to adopt Roma children, and Roma people, on the other hand, are unaware of the needs of Roma orphans. Eva knows that there are many such families that are functional but where the parents are unemployed. With training, they could become professional foster families, thus solving the problem of their long-term unemployment while providing family care for Roma orphans. She searches for such families, encourages them, and provides them with psychological preparation.

In all three areas, Eva uses similar strategies. She carefully searches for participants who could benefit to maximize the effect. She combines resources - professional, site space, finance - that exist in different institutions. Involving institutions makes them aware of the program and the results. This helps insinuate programs into state institutions, which is a precondition for spreading the program widely.

Eva is a trained psychologist. She always started activities that other people tried to avoid because they were difficult or inconvenient. After she gave birth to her son she had health problems, and this experience made her realize what values she wants to work for. At the age of 27 she left her prosperous job and moved to a small town in the northeastern Slovakia in order to establish a counseling center. There is a strong Roma community living in her town. As a psychologist and counselor, she had many Roma clients and became familiar with the problems that their community faces. In 1993 she established the Pro Family foundation, and since that time she has acted as its volunteer director.