Just In Time

Gifts from an American Christian provided firewood for two households in a Roma village in Moldova.Wood burners provide the only heat in these poorly-insulated homes.  Local leadership chose these families based on need.

The firewood arrived just in time. Sub-zero temperatures followed soon after--and stayed. 

The families were very grateful--and so are we!

Gifts like this are a big help. 
Villagers would be even more grateful if someone would help create options like local employment. They'd really like to provide for their own heating. Can you help them help themselves?

Looking for Some Good News?

12 RESULTS IN 2015 THAT WILL MAKE EUROPE A BETTER PLACE FOR ROMA Note:  The CBF Romany Ministry team is not directly connected with the European Roma Rights Centre. We do find good news encouraging. Perhaps you do, too?   Everyone has the right to be free from race discrimination. For Roma in Europe, though, that is more theory than reality. Most Roma in Europe experience discrimination each day. They are denied access to a decent education, refused the right to travel abroad, and many cannot even get equal access to drinking water.  Here are twelve ways we worked with Roma this year to make Europe a better place for all of us: For the first time in Europe an official Roma-only settlement was ruled discriminatory. This Italian court judgment reaffirms the long-held positions of many rights organisations that placing Roma in Roma-only camps, shelters or any other segregated housing fosters social exclusion and is contrary to the European Union laws. We helped a Roma community living in Uzhgorodo, Ukraine to legalise their homes. Sadly sometimes even EU funds are used for the segregation of Roma. Following our complaint to the European Commission, the regional authorities in Naples, Italy, stopped plans for a segregated housing project. Several Romanian Roma were detained and removed from Denmark. With the ERRC’s help, they have already established that their expulsion was unlawful. This year, we helped them reverse a decision refusing them legal aid to continue their case. Roma are often denied personal documents just for being Roma. 2015 was another successful year of our paralegal project in Ukraine, which has, in three years, secured 16 birth certificates, 24 internal passports and 3 external passports for Roma who were living without documents. We have to make sure that National Action Plans for Roma inclusion are really benefiting Roma. With our help, Roma civil society organisations in Ukraine are now actively engaged in advocacy with relevant authorities to improve and implement that country’s plan. When highlighting issues cornering Roma rights, the European Commission picked up our recommendations in its report on Albania, Turkey, Macedonia, and Serbia. The European Court of Human Rights condemned Hungary for discrimination resulting from the failure to investigate a racist attack against a Romani man. The applicant was the victim of a racist attack by a man who claimed to be a police officer and called him a “dirty gypsy”. We intervened in the case as a third party. Perpetrators of an anti-Roma pogrom were found guilty of hate crimes in Italy. We were a civil party in the criminal case. The Macedonian authorities racially profile their citizens who are trying to leave the country and stop Roma from leaving. According to a court judgment delivered this year, the Interior Ministry has to pay compensation to a Romani couple who were not allowed to cross the border to visit their family. The European Commission also mentioned racial profiling at the border in its 2015 progress report on Macedonia. The ERRC worked with a local NGO to help the plaintiffs. Based on complaints we filed with local NGOs, the Ombudsman condemned segregation in two schools in Albania; the Equality Commissioner also found discrimination in one of the cases (and is still considering the second). The Ombudsman in the Czech Republic found discrimination following our complaint about discrimination resulting from a refusal to enrol a Roma child in primary school. “The ERRC is pursuing 158 legal cases in 17 countries. Institutions, ministries and schools must know that they can’t get away with discrimination.” - says Adam Weiss Legal Director of ERRC - “We are getting better every year at uncovering the ways they discriminate. In 2016 and beyond, we will be in court with new cases and securing new legal victories for the Roma rights movement. Note:  This article has been slightly condensed from the original.

Signs of the Season

December 21, the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in central Iowa it is as dark and gloomy as the photograph on the left. Can you even tell what it is supposed to be? It's an image of Christmas. That's also why I've linked it with this blue sign. I happen to be in a hospital right now, waiting for test results on my 90+ year-old mother. It will not be our first Christmas season spent in part or in whole in a hospital. Perhaps you're familiar with that, too?
If so, this post is for you, and for everyone who is not having such a holly jolly Christmas. I know a lot of you--you are missing a loved one who was with you last year and left a hole in your heart this year.  You are half-way through chemo and facing an uncertain future. Your home was bombed, and your country is in chaos. None of this has happened to you, but you've been depressed so long you've forgotten what it even feels like to be happy.

Whatever the reason, you aren't alone. Even in the midst of the frenetic tinseled hype of an American holiday season, a couple of local churches paused to hold an observance for those among us facing a blue Christmas.They were inspired by the baby in this little beam of light. You know, the one who grew up to be a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief.

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 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

 

(Scripture references from Isaiah 53:3 and 53:4)

ROMANY COFFEE-MAKER

Do you have one of those fancy coffee-making machines in your home? They make one cup at a time, brewed through these fancy little coffee-filled gizmos (refillable plastic-and-mesh ones if you're thrifty), and they cost $100+ unless you get them on sale. I know the price, since an in-law of mine was Christmas-shopping for them. We don't need one, though. When Keith was recording the Eastern Slovak Romani New Testament, the Romany brothers showed him how to make coffee without any kind of machine at all. Here's how it's done.

1. Spoon desired amount of coffee into mug.

2. Add boiling water.

3. Stir in sugar.

4. Then stir in more sugar.

5. Enjoy with friends.

So, that's all there is to it. No fancy coffee-making machine needed. Feel free to send the $100+ saved to a worthy cause. (And let me know if you need ideas about which worthy cause . . . I know of one or two . . . .)

A Taste of Home

 
What foods make you feel at home? a particular snack? your own tea? Keith and I had been taking an 8-hour bus ride from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Dallas, Texas. I was feeling out of my element. The snack racks in the store at the rest stop featured cracklings in different flavors, pork rinds, and mini sweet potato pies.   




Then, behind a pot selling boiled peanuts, I saw it. There was the coffee Dutchmen slip into their suitcases and travel trailers so they can have a taste of home far from home:  Douwe Egberts (DOW-e EGG-berts). I couldn't believe my eyes! I had to run back to the bus to tell Keith about it. And then I ran back in to buy a cup to go.

Who is your neighbor--and fellow citizen?

This is an on-going debate, both in North America and in Europe. Take, for instance, the situation of Romany in Hungary. The European Roma Rights Center published the following 10 FACTS ABOUT HUNGARIAN ROMA to remind everyone that Hungarian Roma are an integral part of Hungarian society. As you read, think about your own (long-term) neighbors.

Roma have been living as part of Hungarian society since the 14th century. Today approximately 750,000 Roma live in Hungary. That is 7.49 % of the population. All Hungarian Roma speak Hungarian and only 17% of them speak Hungarian as a second language. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-49 the Roma sided with the Hungarian cause, and many repaired weapons or worked as cannon-casters or camp musicians who assisted the county-level recruitment campaigns. Numerous Hungarian Roma participated in the Revolution of 1956. One of them was Ilona Szabó, who was shot dead at the age of 17 by Soviet forces. Regardless of the shared history and shared struggles Roma in Hungary face neglect, discrimination and oppression. Thousands of Hungarian Roma were killed for being Roma during the Holocaust. Later the Roma worked largely in sectors which went bankrupt after the democratic transition of Hungary in 1990 (mining, heavy industry) and they have not yet recovered: today, only 26% of working-age Roma are employed. The areas where Hungarian Roma live are mainly disadvantaged areas and small villages where there are no job opportunities. The average life expectancy for Roma in Hungary is ten to twelve years less than for non-Roma. Between July 2008 and August 2009, six Romani people, among them a 5 year-old child, were killed, and 55 others injured, in a string of racist attacks in rural Hungarian villages. The openly anti-Roma radical right-wing populist party Jobbik secured 20.54% of the votes during the Parliamentary elections of 2014. Hungary’s Supreme Court recently declared that the segregation of Roma children in church schools is legal.

Finding ministry opportunities

   A few weeks ago Shane and I traveled to Chisinau, Moldova to attend the annual Gypsy Lore Society meeting. It was interesting to hear papers and discussions about work among Roma from a completely different perspective. It was good to look at the situation of Roma with new eyes and be reminded that we always need to be open and willing to learn. You never know when you might meet a new co-­worker.


   Potential collaborators can appear when and where you least expect them, like in a conversation with an atheist researcher who studies Roma public health issues in Slovakia or with a young Spanish woman studying medicine as an exchange student. You might make a connection with an embassy worker or even the ambassador himself at a meet and greet which will later open the doors when you need to push for the repair of the roof at a local Roma school. Volunteering your time at a local school or library and sharing your story can put you in position to receive and share gently ­used clothes, books or furniture items. Attending a training or conference can open new doors to share ministry ideas over a dinner of pancakes and tea.


   Ministry comes in all shapes, sizes and forms. We just have to watch for opportunities through the right lenses.