Cultural Vehicles in Education - assisting the needs of vulnerable social groups

Life Together

Roma Cookbook V

I A description of the activities undertaken during the unit, including comments on the reactions of the group/individual participants

a. Socializing with others of the same origin
b. Put traditional Roma recipes in writing

This session aimed to type the previously prepared recipes on the computer. We used our computer room with five pc for this purpose and the participants were again working with the program Microsoft Word. At the beginning the participants had many difficulties with typing the text that was split among all the attendees. Most of the participants hardly ever used the computer, for this reason this task required a great deal of patience and determination on their side. However, after some time each of them got more acquainted with the keyboard and learned even some of the features of program Microsoft Word. In spite of the difficulties we managed to finish the entire text of the cookbook, namely in both languages Czech and Roma.
The participants made a deal, that whenever anybody of them cooks Traditional Roma dish, they will inform one of the workers involved in the project and she would come, take the picture and add it to the Cookbook.
Consequently, the Roma Cookbook is finished. Now we still have one important task ahead : to find a qualified person who knows Roma language, including the grammar and writing, perfectly and will make the correction of the text. The cookbook got translated to the Roma language only as a draft due to the fact that the participants possess only verbal skills without the proper knowledge of grammar and spelling.

c. Another workshop was scheduled for the June 11th.

II Was the aim of the unit achieved (the implementation of practical skills and the pedagogical aim)?

The Roma Cookbook has been finally finished and ready to be shown to the public. The entire block of Roma cookbook definitely helped the participants to even more increase awareness about their heritage and traditions...
All the participants are very proud of their work and they realized they created something unique and special. This awareness build up their self confidence and self value.
Together we also discussed the influence this work will have on the wide public. Our participants learned that the best way to fight prejudice was via positive examples; while showing a part of Roma culture the majority would realize that their view of Roma was very narrow minded. This acquired skill will be very useful to them throughout their lives in the future.

At the beginning of the typing block the participants felt ambivalent and insecure about working on the computer, it took them long time to find the letters on the keyboard, however, at the end of the block they felt much more comfortable and most of them would like to continue developing their computer skills in the future. The two lessons on the computer prompted interest of the participants in the computer technology and helped them get acquainted with the simple computer operations and typing.

The computer skills are very important today to keep up with the technical progress and with the world and society around us in general. The absence of the computer and of the ability to use it was one of the significant factors deepening the social exclusion of the participants.

III Other remarks (for example on the interaction between artistic and educational elements)

The participants are afraid of new things, especially by means of technology, because they are convinced that they are not smart enough to be able to operate anything properly. They are hard learners and for this reason it was necessary to use practical and entertaining way to start developing their computer skills.

Because everybody was very enthusiastic about creating a cookbook on their own, they put aside restraints and fear they would normally have if asked to work on the computer.. Accordingly, under normal circumstances they would be very nervous in front of the computer. Instead, due to the entertaining way we chose for developing this ability, everybody was relaxed and enjoyed the typing. The attendees realized that computer work is for everybody; it just needs a little practice.