Fundación Punjab

Management and organization chart.

   The ARCO IRIS project is a socio-educational intervention project that will be coordinated by the Social Services of the Town Council of Castellón, by the Provincial Council of Castellón and by the Punjab Foundation. This function of coordination will develop through a network of support formed by Administrations, Institutions and NGOs. The Arco Iris Project will count on the active cooperation of educational Administrations and Jaime I University, through the Opre Roma Project, and the Department of Philosophy and Sociology. Moreover, the technical team of the Gypsy Association of Castellón will closely collaborate with the Arco Iris project which will benefit from the created social networks and the synergy of other intervention projects developed by this city. Other projects, entities and voluntary groups will collaborate at different phases.

       The Arco Iris project is specially designed for a collective of gypsy families in three peripheral districts, in the west zone of the city of Castellón: Tombatoissals, Las Brevas and San Agustín. These districts, with their origin, their peripheral urban situation and the profile of their inhabitants, as well as gypsies as non-gypsy, have cultural characteristics with multiple functions on which we consider to intervene first of all.

   Given that the material resources that we have at our disposal do not allow, as it would be desirable, an integral intervention designed for the group of the families of the above-mentioned districts, this intervention project suggests developing actions in two concrete places: the San Agustín district school, a primary education centre whose persons in school are as a majority gypsies (99%) and the Social Centre of the Punjab Foundation, strategically situated nearby the three districts of the projects.

Intervention groups

The groups for whom the project is designed are:

·    Gypsy children and teenagers aged between 3 and 16, from the city of Castellón and particularly from the district of San Agustín, Las Brevas and Tombaatossals.
·    Gypsy families whose children are sent to school in the centers of the project.
·    The teaching profession and the pupils of the Public Centre of San Agustín, Serrano Suñer, Ies, La Plana, Ies Bovalar.

Actions and objectives of the project.

The actions that the Arco Iris project will develop with every group are the following:

Four Seasons School. We suggest, as part of an educational action and school support designed for little gypsy children sent to school, creating a social context of apprenticeship and interaction between families who could be go-betweens to support social actions related to multiple aspects:

a.    To encourage the city participation of the families.
b.    To create stable links with some Parents Associations from the School Centers.
c.    To stimulate and develop processes of professional formation and insertion.
d.    To stimulate the access to existing social and cultural resources.

Mothers and Fathers’ School (AMPAS). The Mothers’ school related to the Arco Iris School pretends to promote the participation of gypsy families within the school institutions. It consists in creating social links between mothers and gypsy pupils, through a place of meeting and multifunctional reflection:

a.    To create a place of psycho-social support.
b.    To encourage the personal autonomy and the development and the participation to the AMPAS and School Centers.
c.    To stimulate the basic insertion and the literacy.
d.    To prioritize the participation of gypsy families in the School Councils of the Centers.
e.    To stimulate positive perspectives about the apprenticeship, insertion and school.
f.    To promote the social, cultural and professional insertion of gypsy participant women.
g.    To promote the access to new technologies and to the computer literacy.
h.    To stimulate their culture in social and cultural actions.

Open School. Serrano Suñer, San Agustín, IES Bovalar and IES La Plana. This phase of the Arco Iris project will be realized in coordination with the supervision teams of the Centers.

The objectives of this action are the following:

a.    To develop a Permanent Seminary of Intercultural Formation designed for the teaching profession of the Center in cooperation with Jaime I University.
b.    To encourage the participation of the families in the Mothers and Fathers’ Association of the Center and in school and extracurricular activities.
c.    To realize support actions to pupils and to their families to improve the regular attendance to school.
d.    To realize support actions to the teaching profession and to cooperate in the development of school and extracurricular activities.

Absenteeism and school monitoring in the primary and secondary education centers of Castellón. In this phase of the Arco Iris Project, we will carry out the following actions.

a.    Registry of the underage children belonging to the gypsy ethnic group of Castellón who are registered in the city’s school centers in the phase of compulsory schooling, by taking the identification information of the father, the mother or the tutor, as well of the family place of residence.
b.    Checking the underage children’s presence in age of going to school in the non-sedentary
 sale activities, purely punished in the Town Rule in force which regulates the latter.
c.    Permanent follow-up, in collaboration with educational centers, of the regular attendance with the underage children of the Educational Center, by communicating to the Town Social Services the detection of irregularities in the attendance and/or the precocious school desertion or abandonment.
d.     Detection of underage children who are not sent to school in the phase of the compulsory schooling, and ulterior to the communication to the Social Services.
e.    Interview with the family of the shirker pupil by registering the alleged reasons for the family which motivate the school absenteeism, under the model of protocol existing in the project.
f.    At the end of the academic semester, to transfer to the Town Social Services the registries of the above- mentioned interviews, in order to evaluate the program of school absenteeism and the development of memoires, by maintaining in any case the anonymity of the interviewed people.
g.    At the end of the academic semester, to transfer to the Town Social Services the registry of the interviews realized with the supervision teams, the tutors, the teachers, etc., the underage children from the gypsy ethnic group in order to evaluate and establish the Memoires.
h.    To collaborate to achieve the objective of a complete schooling of the Infant Education population in the stage from 3 to 5 years old, as a prevention of the accomplishment of the schooling in the compulsory phase.
i.    To develop awareness campaigns designed to prevent the temporary school abandonment, particularly by underage children, in order to be careful about the family responsibilities. To communicate to Town Social Services when problems of this nature -which could be dealt with by other social resources- occur.
j.    Participation to the “Local Commission of School Absenteeism” and to the “Town Table of Absenteeism”, in the planned extensions in the protocol called “Project of cooperation between Institutions concerning the problem of school absenteeism.
k.    To accompany or provide assistance with the tutors and/or the supervision teams of the Mediar school centers to parents of underage children during the interviews, and/or to accompany them to the interviews to the Territorial Supervision of the Social Services or to the Public Ministry of Underage children, when their presence is required for an investigation initiated because of the school absenteeism of a pupil.
l.    To promote the participation of young people to the Gypsy Community in the activities of the school community, in celebrations, extracurricular activities, sport competitions…etc.
m.    To stimulate numerous activities and actions likely to contribute to make the communication and comprehension of idiosyncrasy of the Gypsy Community of Castellón easier.

Evaluating and monitoring the project.

Considering that the rigorous evaluation of the project is one of the objectives of utmost importance, this phase will count on the support of the Department of Philosophy and Sociology of Jaime I University Jaime.

In all the actions of the programme, an initial evaluation will be realized and followed by a series of flexible and continuous evaluations in order to assess the progresses of the participants to the programme. In the last phase of the project, a final evaluation will be done in order to assess (with different variables) the progresses according to the previously targeted objectives.

In order to realize a detailed follow-up of the processes of intervention, we consider necessary to create a few instruments of specific evaluation which divide up into three domains:
a.    Psychological examinations and on the attitude.
b.    “Instrumental examinations and on the contents.
c.    Registry on assistance and participation.

The psychological examinations will be implemented in the actions of the programme in which it is necessary to assess the progresses realized concerning the personal development and progress in the attitudes. The instrumental examinations will be implemented in order to assess the progress in the apprenticeship of the contents and, finally, for all the actions we will keep a rigorous register of the direct and indirect participation of gypsy families, in different actions of the project.

With this process of progressive evaluation, we will be able to hand in at the end of the development of the Arco Iris Project a diagnosis of the preliminary situation and of the impact that its development will have for gypsy families. These materials and results will constitute an important part of the final memoire of the project.