Case Study: School Desegregation in Vidin, Bulgaria

Section 2: Drom and the Campaign to Desegregate

Media

The desegregation project was conceived as a high-impact civic initiative. The strategy was to prove that integration can work by providing a model that could be replicated, with a view to influencing government and bringing pressure to bear for substantial policy reform on Roma education. Towards this end the role of the media was of crucial importance. One of the main objectives was to actively engage the Roma community and win the support of the wider Bulgarian society for the provision of equal educational opportunities for Romani children. Public perceptions had been colored by the "Yambol incidents" which occurred one year earlier. In Yambol, a town in southeastern Bulgaria, a disorganized, mechanical transfer of Romani children into regular schools sparked a racist backlash and protests by white parents that resulted in Romani students being sent back to the segregated school.

Drom, with the support of Minority Rights Group, London, and the European Roma Rights Center, Budapest, launched a sustained media campaign targeting local, regional, and national print and broadcasting media. This campaign succeeded in attracting positive coverage and promoting a wider consensus concerning the desegregation process. Media reporting included a half-hour documentary on Drom and desegregation broadcast on the main Bulgarian television channel, bTV, on December 2000; a report by Nancy Durham shown by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in September 2000; and a full-page article—"Bulgaria Opens School Doors for Gypsy Children"—written by John Tagliabue for the New York Times on June 12, 2001, which also appeared in the International Herald Tribune two days later. In addition, throughout the process there have been regular news updates, interviews, and documentary features, and discussion and debate in the newspapers, on television, and on the radio.