Community Renewal - Tackling discrimination

“I started volunteering at the Youth Centre from a really young age, about 14 and I'm 21 now. I started as a volunteer then went on to work at Community Renewal.

In secondary school, there was bullying and discrimination. I always stood up for myself, but I know that other people couldn't. So I usually try to stand up for people.

I could see that some kids were losing confidence in themselves and that affected whether they came to school or dropped out. Or their parents got scared and didn’t want them to go.

By the time I left secondary school I didn't see it happening as much as it used to. There’s a lot of stereotype being held against Roma people. It’s getting better in schools but outside there is discrimination. You walk into a shop and they're watching you because they think you’re going to steal.

We had a lot of teachers I could depend on, who stood up for us and made us feel welcome. So if we if we did ever feel like we were being discriminated against we had somewhere to go.

I struggled a bit with my mental health and through Community Renewal I got support with an art therapist when I was 16. I didn’t realise I needed help. Joining the group for me has opened so many doors and helped me with not just with my mental health but with life in in general.

After school I needed encouragement from a community worker to go to college. I didn’t go at first and I had no idea what I wanted to do. It’s not the same coming from teachers or career advisors. It was just the little push and just someone saying, oh, yeah, you can actually do it. I came back to the youth group and I started working here. After that I kind of got my encouragement back because I lost it for a while. Here, you can mess up 10 times and you could change your mind 20 times and it's fine. They say just come back whenever you feel like it. I came back here and my motivation came back. I saw the opportunity. I studied community development and loved it.

We had an amazing youth worker here who really cared and believed in us. She told us that whatever background were from, we could do the same thing as anyone else. Some people don’t believe or trust we can handle things. I was part of the young leaders project here and it did a lot for us. Not just encouraged us but inspired us.

Being part of the Roma community in Govanhill means feeling accepted and knowing there are others like me, people that face similar difficulties. Through our work here we’ve supported other young people, they managed to get so many opportunities and learn new skills. One has got into football coaching because of the opportunities they got.

We didn't really have that in the past. Now it's slowly transitioning to our community having more equal opportunities with others. It feels great.

We want to offer the support that we had from our peers to the young people that come in into our youth group now. That’s our goal. And we want to see Roma people represented in different jobs, like GP receptionist, or team manager, as we don’t see that right now.”