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Participatory development
The Agricultural Development Foundation (ADF) has worked since 1994 with the specific objective of helping set up rural participatory groups in European accession countries. ADF helped establish the Hungarian Agricultural Development Foundation (AFA-Agrárfejlesztési Alapítvány) based in Budapest. This organization is completely independent of ADF and provides an independent vehicle for policy evaluation.
Since 1994, the ADF identified rural poverty & exclusion of the Roma in Central Europe to be a major issue. Awareness of this issue arose as a direct result of field work in Central Europe where institutional and societal discrimination against the Roma continues unheeded by law, moral or ethical considerations and in contradiction of existing European law. This situation has continued without change following the accesssion of Central European countries to the European Union.
The ADF has provided four lines of support by helping set up:
- independent advocacy action groups
- independent specialised media groups
- independent community based participatory development through direct action problem solving
- a means of dissemination of information on practial problem solving
Along these lines of action we have helped organize four organizations which deal with Roma affairs all of which are independent of the ADF:
- Advocacy action - European Committeee on Romani Emanciption - a pan-European NGO concerned with advocacy for change especially in the areas of schooling and post-school training
- Specialised media - Romani World - a Romani online news medium
- Community based participatory development - Tiszai Csoport Tarsasag - managed entirely by Roma and is concerned with employment creation in the Tisza Valley in Eastern Hungary
- Information dissemination - Romani Forum - under development
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