Le Réseau Jai Bhim en Hongrie

Paola Rise

Description

Ci-dessous est présenté le Réseau Jai Bhim de Hongrie. Il s’agit d’une communauté bouddhiste reconnue qui fait fonctionner le Lycée Dr Ámbédkar dans le village de Sajókaza. L’école vise à aider la communauté Rom locale à sortir de la pauvreté et de l’isolement, par un programme éducatif adapté à ses besoins. Cette initiative aide les Roms à reconstruire une cohésion fondée sur leurs propres traditions et sur des valeurs bouddhiques.
L'auteure est diplômée d'HEC, Majeure Alternative Management, en 2011.

Sujets

• Changement
• Développement
• Territoires
• Éducation
• Bouddhisme

Informations

• Publié par: bde
• Nombre de lectures: 107
• Licence : En savoir +
  Paternité, pas d'utilisation commerciale
• Langue: English

Extrait

Observatoire du Management Alternatif
Alternative Management Observatory
__

INITIATIVE


Jai Bhim Network Hungary








Csilla Nárai – Février 2011
Majeure Alternative Management – HEC Paris – 2010-2011





Nárai Csilla – Fiche d’initiative: «Jai Bhim Network Hungary» - février 2011 1



Le Réseau Jai Bhim en Hongrie

Cette fiche a été réalisée dans le cadre du cours « Grands défis planétaires » donné par
Denis Bourgeois, David Khoudour-Castéras et Thanh Nghiem au sein de la Majeure
ème
Alternative Management, spécialité de 3 année du programme Grande Ecole d’HEC Paris.

Résumé: Ci-dessous est présenté le Réseau Jai Bhim de Hongrie. Il s’agit d’une communauté
bouddhiste reconnue qui fait fonctionner le Lycée Dr Ámbédkar dans le village de Sajókaza.
L’école vise à aider la communauté Rom locale à sortir de la pauvreté et de l’isolement, par
un programme éducatif adapté à ses besoins. Cette initiative aide les Roms à reconstruire une
cohésion fondée sur leurs propres traditions et sur des valeurs bouddhiques.

Mots clés: Education, Défavorisé, Bouddhisme


The Jai Bhim Network in Hungary

This review was presented in the « Global challenges » course of Denis Bourgeois, David
Khoudour-Castéras and Thanh Nghiem. This course is part of the “Alternative Management”
specialization of the third-year HEC Paris business school program.

Abstract: The paper presents the activity of the Jai Bhim Network in Hungary, a unique
Buddhist religious organization that operates the Dr Ámbédkar School in the village of
Sajókaza. The school’s main goal is to help the local Roma community to get out of the
despairing situation of poverty and segregation by providing a tailor-made school and help to
rebuild community cohesion on both their own tradition and the new values of Buddhism.

Key words: Education, Disadvantaged, Buddhism




Summary

1. Basic data: p. 3
2. History: p. 3
3. Mission and values : p. 7
4. Analyse de l’auteur de la fiche : p. 8
5. Sources : p. 9
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Nárai Csilla – Fiche d’initiative: «Jai Bhim Network Hungary» - février 2011 21. Basic data

The Jai Bhim Network is a registered religious organization in Hungary that operates the
Dr. Ámbédkar Secondary Grammar School, Vocational School and Elementary School for
Adult Education in the village of Sajókaza, in the highly disadvantaged region of Ózd, North
East Hungary. The school was opened in 2007 and in 2010 they have put in place a tutor
program involving eleven villages and targeting three hundred and thirty pupils of the region.


2. History


The story of the Jai Bhim Network unfolds in two dimensions. One is path of the founder
and director of the school, Tibor Derdák, previously involved in other similar projects – and
the other one is the highly unusual Buddhist affiliation. Following a presentation of both lines,
the paper provides a description of the initiatives’ financing structure and activity – in
education and beyond.

The story that inspires
Dr B. R. Ambedkar, issued from a very poor, untouchable caste family of fourteen
children, after succeeding his exams at high school (where he was the first untouchable
student, facing the most severe discrimination) got a state scholarship to study at Columbia
University where he obtained a master’s degree in Economics. Then, he started a PhD at
London School of Economics, but had to return to India where his career was closed down by
barriers of social exclusion, despite his talent and excellent academic record. Thanks to his
talent and hard work, he could still return to Britain, complete a PhD and establish a legal
practice. His new start in India proved to be more successful he got involved in promoting
social uplifting of the untouchables and in a few years he became one of the most prominent
political figures of the time, efficiently criticizing the caste system and fighting for human
rights. As India gained independence in 1947, he was nominated to law minister and to
Chairman of the Constitution drafting Committee – becoming the Father of the Constitution.
Later on he made the discovery that Mahar people, his ancestors were originally Buddhist
people living as outcasts and made into untouchables as they refused to convert into Hinduism
Nárai Csilla – Fiche d’initiative: «Jai Bhim Network Hungary» - février 2011 3– so he converted himself and a large number of his followers to Buddhism, a religion that
endorses equality and liberty.

Responding to an urging need
This was thus the story that caught the attention of Tibor Derdák, a Hungarian sociologist
and social entrepreneur, working on a new project that could provide a long term solution for
young, heavily disadvantaged (mostly Roma) people who are outside of the scope of public
minority programs. Many of these young people are living in small villages in distant areas,
with very high unemployment rates and hopelessly indebted households. They typically don’t
participate in secondary education, might have difficulties with reading and counting and they
have almost no chance to get a job contract other than seasonal physical work. Apart from
being poor and without access to good schools or even teaching materials, their problem is
deeply rooted in the social environment. After the regime change, these poorly educated
Roma families, living almost always in a separate part of the village, did not find their way on
the job market and got dependent on state allowances, while poverty aggravated. In this
environment of disappointment and apathy, compulsory education does not appear as any
kind of solution, what’s more they don’t even believe that they could finish school; higher
education is not even a dream. So the families are not motivated to keep their children at
school, nor do they encourage them to get a qualification – an effort gladly backed by
pessimistic teachers and ignorant policy makers. As a result, inequalities are frozen and their
disadvantage gets deeper and deeper.
Seeing this situation, Tibor Derdák started working on educational programs for Roma
children in the early nineties and co-founded the very successful Gandhi Secondary School in
Pécs (South Hungary) in 1994. This was a regular secondary school for an ethnic minority,
aiming to prepare students for higher education and it worked out so well, that the actual poor
village kids coming from real segregation could not really get in any more. So he launched a
tutorial program called Amrita association, that operated in a self-help system, integrating
more successful Roma students as tutors – the project worked well, but being only tutorage, it
would not give the certificates demanded by the job market. Thus the idea of the Dr
Ambedkar School (and its smaller predecessor, called Kis Tirgis, Little Tiger founded in 2004
in South Hungary) came from these experiences: how to make these children pass the leaving
exam in a way that could help the whole community and engage even the most disadvantaged
groups?
Nárai Csilla – Fiche d’initiative: «Jai Bhim Network Hungary» - février 2011 4As a location, they chose the village of Sajókaza, where they previously started working
with two families and could pride themselves on two university students. The village is
located in one of the poorest regions of Hungary that remained without work opportunities
when the mines were closed and the heavy industry bankrupted more than forty years ago. It
is reported to have a 30-50% of Roma population, living in separate parts of Sajókaza, in
houses with lamentable conditions, almost exclusively unemployed and barely having made
until the 8th class.

Financing the mission
When looking for partners for the aforementioned educational programs, Derdák and his
colleagues started to search also among religious groups and churches. Not only that these
were traditionally close to the mission of education and helping the poor, but schools
registered as “religious” also receive higher state quotas, essentially important for a school
where students cannot pay for any equipment. As most of the Roma people are catholic, first
they went this