Slovak Governance Institute is a non-profit, non-governmental organization with a focus on good governance and public policy. The SGI’s mission is to initiate and promote the search for solutions to improve the process of making and implementing decisions on the allocation of public resources to meet the society’s needs to ensure good, accessible, transparent and effective public services for the citizens. Particularly, the team of the SGI conducts research and policy analysis in the field of education, employment, transparency, and local government and has been involved in various research and advocacy projects related to Roma inclusion in education and labour market. Since April 2018, SGI has been implementing the Public Administration Actively Supporting the Second Chance Education – a project in which we try to (1) improve a second chance education system and to (2) help the young marginalized Roma to raise their chances to better integrate into the labour market by providing them with education. 

About the project Public Administration Actively Supporting the Second Chance Education 

The project is implemented by the Slovak Governance Institute (leading organization) and the ETP Slovakia – Center for Sustainable Development (partner NGO) through the financial support of the Operational Program Effective Public Administration within the European Social Fund. 

The project reacts on an issue of increasing rate of early school dropout, thereby the number of uneducated young people, specifically in the context of young Roma. In relation to this, it addresses a need to improve a setting of the second chance education and so to improve its functioning. The project aims to come up with recommendations which would consider a situation of excluded marginalized groups and barriers their members face in access to education. 

Community level

The project has been implemented in 4 localities of Eastern Slovakia: Luník IX., Veľká Ida, Rankovce, and Stará Ľubovňa in which we worked with young Roma from marginalized groups.  In each locality, a social pedagogue and an after-school teacher provided support to the group of youngsters. The key action was the recruitment process during which they motivated young Roma to join the formal education system through the second chance. Once they did, a social pedagogue and an after-school teacher had started to provide them with mentoring and tutoring in informal after-school sessions. During the sessions, they worked with strengthening the motivation (e. g. through leisure activities such as going to cinema, introducing and meeting role-models, trips to different localities, etc.). 

Cooperation with stakeholders

Through the cooperation with representatives of schools with second chance programs, representatives of self-governing regions and other institutional actors (e. g. Office of the Labour, community workers, etc.) the project aims to identify barriers in good functioning the second chance education and to find out the solutions to the identified issues.