Lighthouse Centre for Culture and Education is proud to announce the start of the project Culture_on_Tour. On Monday 23rd of April 2007 groups of Roma and non-Roma young adults have started their activities together in the brand new space offered by the KUDA.org.

During these first few days a group of 40 young adults, from the city of Novi Sad, have been participating in our four workshops. These young people, part of whom are coming from the poor Roma village and part from the Novi Sad secondary school, are meeting each other for the first time. It is here, in our project, that they have the opportunity to talk to each other, to listen to each other and to learn something together.

From the very beginning they have shown huge interest in our kind of work and they were feel ready to approach our workshops. It is right there that their creative spirits are bring tickled to start producing some of the most amazing results.

We started by organizing thematic discussions in which we bring up the problems of everyday life and challenges these young people are facing at home, in school and in their families. Topics such as poverty, surviving on day-to-day basis, lack of primary education, early marriages are problems Roma youth are faced with every day. On the other hand non-Roma children are coming from different surroundings where these issues are approached in a different way. Two opposite worlds put together in the same room to learn and work together, to get to know and understand each other better.

In our first discussion we realised that although some of the Roma youth are not going to school anymore and are unable to read or write, are very much aware of their situation and wish to be treated equally. They are craving for knowledge and new experiences, a fact that puts them on the same level with all other young people of Novi Sad.