Lupovino (lutte pour une vie normale)

To briefly present ourselves, let us say that we are a sociocultural center. Our name is Lupovino (which means "LUtte POur une VIe NOrmale" / "struggle for a normal life") and we aim at working with gypsies.

The association was created in 1995 by a group of gyspie women to relay their expectations and their demands to the City of Strasbourg (back then manager of the land).

Today, the main aim of Lupovino is to provide social support to the families living in the polygon neighborhood. Lupovino’s main tasks are to help families to gain a better lifestyle.

To understand why helping these families is important, we must explain the social context where a lot of youngsters grow up.

Social obstacles.
Young people here face discrimination at school and in society in general because they are gypsies. And usually, gypsies are not well seen; they have this image of chicken thieves. They also often grow up in families where the father is whether missing, whether in prison.

Since these young people face discrimination and have broken families, they tend to develop anti-social behaviors : they can be violent verbally and physically sometimes.

Economic obstacles.
Almost 80% of teenagers live in families who are totally dependant on the social welfare system. Since most of fathers are in prison, a lot of families are living with only one parent and several children and/ or teenagers. The amount of work at home for women is also strikingly high. They have to take care of children, wash, doing homework (but most of the time they cannot help their children since they have not been at school). Since they have to work so hard, teenagers are most of the time not really framed by any authority, especially that most of the time the father is the authority (but in prison it is hard for fathers to be authoritarians).

Educational difficulties.
A lot of teenagers don't really enjoy school and drop out of school at a very early stage. A lot of girls drop out of school around 15-17 years old and have babies at that time. When we talk to them, they don't seem to appreciate school or the authority that teachers represent at school. They also are very lost with their future. They don't know what they can do in life.

regarding all these difficulties, we still believe a better lifestyle is possible for these young people.

This is the reason why Lupovino work very hard to create opportunities :

- for family members to bound together
- for people of the neighborhood to find a job (we help them to work on their CV, to find professional trainings that fit their personnal desires of evolution in society, etc.)

We are also very keen on focusing on youth because we believe that if youth goes well, the population will get better little by little. This is why we truly think that creating opportunities of moving out of the neighborhood for teenagers could make a difference.

Teenagers are almost all the time at home, they barely go to school and the rate of unemployment is very high.