Lisbon wants to have a program of intercultural mediators for the Roma community | Human rights
Believing that it is “necessary in the development and deepening of intercultural dialogue in several communities”, the Lisbon Chamber between cultural rights and the creation of a municipal program to work with cultural media people, specifically aimed at gypsies.
The proposal, which is an initiative of the councilor of the Left Bloc, Beatriz Gomes Dias, was unanimously approved at this Thursday’s chamber meeting. And it provides that, within 60 days, the municipal services present a proposal for the term of this eight programs, which must be established in eight axes: Education, Employment, Training, Associations, Volunteer Services, Housing and Housing and Volunteering.
“We want to be who the councilors are or help communities for these people, who are often denied, and fight the prejudices that they are”, framing the PÚBLICA community.
The idea is that these mediators are a reference figure for the communities and that they work “in an articulated and transversal way” with civil society organizations and people from these communities. And that mediators are trained and hired to integrate services and entities of the municipality, such as health centers and social services, so that there is “less noise, fewer communities and thus, reduction of exclusion processes” that these are often frequent , notes Beatriz Gomes Days.
This process, notes the BE, must be “participated by Roma people and organizations representing Roma communities”. At the same time, says the mayor, the municipality will also work on a municipal strategy for the integration of Roma people.
Still with Beatriz Gomes Dias, the municipality does not have any urban media project in line with city life, which the councilor considers important to promote the participation of Roma people in the city. But she even recalled that a municipal company that manages urban neighborhoods, Gebalis, recalled a program of sociocultural mediators that served as a bridge between neighborhood residents and municipal technicians.
In the text, a member of the Commission for the integration of processes of the European Union recognizes that these organizations are the target of the integration of processes of exclusion and that they are developing strategies that are helpful for the Member States of the Union. And that the Portugal Strategy, recognized for the first time, by the Integration of Communities (ENIC, in which they recognize themselves) that “make Roma people the target of prejudice, 2 and social exclusion”.
One strategy envisages the formulation of public policies and a correction of equality structures, in order to promote equal opportunities, to promote social, or to fight by force of the communities, with the figure of a mediator of the Portuguese Roma communities. . This measure advanced in some municipalities, but in Lisbon it never came to fruition.
approved local plan
At the same meeting, another proposal was unanimously approved, signed by councilor Paula Marques, for the analysis of a “Local Plan for the Inclusion of the Roma Community”, within the framework of the National Strategy for the Integration of Roma Communities. And that also intends to include intercultural mediators.
According to the proposal, this plan should “support, using its means with specific measures, the training and organization of organizations, institutions and other entities of the Roma community”. And he recalls the pilot project “Mudar de Vida” that was developed in partnership with the Associação Vida Criativa and Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa and civil society, academic and gypsy organizations. For Paula Marque, it is an “example of an altered intervention” and a “decisive program to change the existing resources in the territories, citizen participation, the articulations of civil society organizations and the partnership relations between local actors”.
This plan is intended to have a “historic opportunity to reverse secular processes of stigmatization and social exclusion” towards these communities, visible in various areas, such as property, employment or education.