The European Roma Grassroots Organisations (ERGO) Network consists of Roma organisations that focus on the Roma grassroots empowerment and mobilisation and promotes active-citizenship awareness. ERGO assesses the dynamics and mechanisms of change and propose concepts and methods that creates the opportunity for Roma to become respected citizens in their societies and to make their voice heard from grassroots up towards the European level.

Grassroots!

One of the central parts of the ERGO philosophy is the concept of mobilisation of Roma at the grassroots level. This concept plays a central role in our three ERGO working programmes on advocacy, youth and local policy monitoring. Especially our policy monitoring programme and our youth programme focus on mobilising Roma at the grassroots level. Please take a look here for more information about our youth programme. Here you will find more information about our policy monitoring programme.

What is grassroots mobilisation?

So, what does ERGO mean with grassroots mobilisation? ERGO invests in the empowerment and mobilisation of Roma at the grassroots level by supporting activism and leadership. Empowerment is a process that enables people to take control of their own lives and act together to produce change. Our concept of empowerment is based on a process-oriented approach, which focuses on the mechanisms of change which provide Roma with the possibility of overcoming stigma and better negotiating their interests in society. The work carried out by our partner organisations is long-term and oriented towards sustainability. ERGO believes the main priority is the process of change, rather than short-term solutions.

Our mechanism of change has a participatory, long-term and bottom-up approach. Through empowerment and grassroots mobilisation, we strive for active citizenship. Grassroots mobilisation is a process which brings people together and enables them to fight for a common cause. Our main concern is to mobilise Roma in different countries, in order to help them to organise themselves, to identify priorities and to bring them on the political agenda of responsible institutions at different levels. Since most Roma policies are created on the highest national level, we promote a bottom-up approach, taking into account grassroots priorities. ERGO functions as a communication chain that facilitates the exchange of information and knowledge, as well as serving as a watchdog over relevant authorities.

If you want to find out more about the vision of ERGO, than please take a look at ERGO`s strategy on active citizenship.