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Samuil Municipality is located in the southern part of Ludogorie in the northeastern part of Bulgaria. The municipality is composed of villages 14 in total.
The Roma population is made of different communities: Horahanne, Rudari and "Musicians".
Unemployment and access to services are crucial issues in Samuil. The villages are not well connected with the main town and 30% of the Roma inhabitants have left Samuil in the last 5 years, which led to an increase of the school dropout rate.
Samuil municipality joined the ROMACT program in August 2018 with the signature of the letter of agreement.
The involvement of Roma community members has been a challenge in Samuil and the Community Action Group (CAG) could only be formalised at the end of November 2018.
The Municipal Taskforce for Roma Inclusion was created on 5 February 2019.
Several training were provided:
The Local Authorities were trained/coached on:
* Drafting project idea & establishing partnership under transnational cooperation
The CAG was trained/coached on:
* Participation in a meeting of the Public Council on Social Inclusion/Taskforce
* Local self-government
* Implementing a community survey and collecting data
* Advocating with Local Authorities for addressing social exclusion
The Municipality benefited of ROMACT expertise for the following project:
- "Socio-economic integration and improving the access to education of persons from vulnerable groups in municipality of Samuil" - OPHRD & OPSESG - Approved- Budget: 435 631€
- BGCULTURE-2.001-0060- VivaCom Ltd- Under evaluation