Bulgaria
Producing Literature for Roma Young People in Central Europe
A CTI trainer has been conducting workshops for writers on writing culturally-specific books for Roma young people. In cooperation with the Next Page Foundation from Bulgaria (www.npage.org), writers from Macedonia, Romania, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Bulgaria have been helped to fashion books for young people out of stories from Roma communities.
An added focus of the initiative has been to promote reading in the Roma language (or languages, since different written versions are used in different countries). Bilingual books are being produced in the projects, and these are being used both in community projects to promote language and literacy, and also in special classes that have been set up in Central and Southeastern European countries to promote Roma culture and language.
CTI’s trainers include published children’s authors and children’s literature specialists. The book production work has been supported by the Next Page Foundation, with grants from the European Community.
