On Roma Resilience: A Note From Our Founder

Some days are beautiful and some days are brutal. Every once in a while they are both beautiful and brutal. Being the mom of a three-month-old baby and organizing an educational festival with multiple events—a fundraiser to raise critical funds to continue the mission of the Roma Peoples Project—is perhaps the most extreme sport I’ve ever practiced. These days, I wake up very early, at 5.00 or 6.00 am to update the festival with the events we have this week and to coordinate with our speakers, participants and collaborators. Working on this very complex project is like adding pieces to a puzzle on moving sand. And still, every day, we add one piece and then another.

Every day brings something new, whether a change in the schedules of the speakers who have had flights cancelled or postponed, who have to move from one place to another, who have deadlines and exams, patients to see, children to homeschool. And still they are coming together to support our efforts, because they believe that the Roma, a people—like so many other stigmatized peoples—who have been marginalized and mistreated should finally have a seat at the table. Because they think it’s time to rewrite history in more inclusive and honest ways.

Several of you wrote to me to ask what you can do to help. The best help is to check out our list of events and share it on your Facebook wall (and other social media), get your pay-what-you-wish ticket and join us online. Our next event—Resistance & Resilience: Stories of Roma Survival during the Holocaust—will take place in the early afternoon of June 16th. Join our efforts today and in the coming days!

You resent Zoom by now and don’t want to spend more time in front of your computer? No problem, you can help us anyway by donating directly through our Columbia University giving page.

I hope today is more beautiful than brutal, but if it’s on the brutal side, I know that joining our event this evening will help. It’s about reaching stability when so much is changing and there is so much tension and high emotion in the air. The event this evening (starting at 7.00 pm) is hosted by the wonderful Laura Waldman, who is a conflict mediator and Oana Mihalache, a Fulbright scholar at Columbia, who studies conflicts at the inter-state level. Oana shares more about her support for the Roma Peoples Project in this video.

For everyone who has joined our events so far, we are extremely grateful for your support. For those who have not yet joined, we hope to see you soon!