Roma communities in Slovakia face critical housing conditions. Non profit organisation DOM.ov supports families and individuals to overcome this challenge.
Quality of housing conditions for marginalized Roma communities (MRC) is among the most burning social issues in Slovakia.
Social enterprise DOM.ov aims to overcome this challenge and targets social and financial barriers of people from MRC to finance, build and own their own house. With the involvement of local municipalities, DOM.ov guides people through the process of saving, accessing financial resources through the mortgage, purchasing land and building and owning their new house. The design of houses is unified and low cost. The houses are built by the families themselves under the supervision and guidance of construction experts employed by DOM.ov.
The aim is to activate the whole family and a wider community, and alongside the specific family/individual housing condition improvement, to increase individuals' skills, which may help them succeed in the labour market. Many individuals involved in the program subsequently applied for a job in the construction sector. The intense social work strongly supports the work with individual families. DOM.ov represents successful intersectoral cooperation; it is initiated by organizations from the NGOs sector, strongly supported by a commercial bank (Slovenska sporitelna, member of the ERSTE group) which provides people with mortgages and local municipalities, which are crucial in the process of accessing the land for building houses and legal recognition of the constructed houses.
Resources needed
In terms of human resources, the involvement of following experts is necessary: Construction expert, Construction teacher, Social worker and Coordinator. In terms of financial resources, in 2019, yearly budget of DOM.ov was 106 000 EURO
Evidence of success
The model proved to be successful in building new houses and changing lives for people from marginalized Roma communities. In 2016 DOM.ov worked in two villages, in 2019 it was 17 villages. Number of municipalities interested in the work of DOM.ov is growing constantly. The model is also recognized on the national and international level; in 2020, the organization was awarded the Social Marie prize for social innovations.
Difficulties encountered
Key challenge is a complex social situation of people from marginalized Roma communities and a high level of persisting prejudices against Roma, which is deeply enrooted in the society. Thus, every organisation active in the social inclusion of people from MRC must deal with this issue.
Potential for learning or transfer
The approach performed by Project DOM.ov is especially feasible for rural communities with accessible lands for building houses or countries with a lack of rental houses/flats. Once the land is accessible, the model is easily replicable elsewhere and in a context of almost any marginalized groups/communities. It proved to be successful in the context of marginalized Roma communities; however, it may be easily replicated in the case of the people immigrated to Europe who also suffer from critical lack of housing and poor conditions, and low financial income which complicates their access to decent housing.
Tags: Community, Enterprise, Housing, Marginalised groups, Microfinance, Poverty, Social
