Embassy Events
“CrossRoads”: American Trainer Aims to Motivate Roma Unemployed in Eastern Slovakia
May 4, 2009
Civic Association ETP Slovakia, the Center for Sustainable Development, from April 27–May 7 is conducting training of social field workers, who will in turn train unemployed people from eastern Slovakia, including approximately 90% Roma. The program, called CrossRoads, is psychological training developed in Colorado at Dovetail Consulting. American trainer Victoria Ball teaches unemployed motivational strategies to improve their lives and helps them understand why welfare benefits are not a long-term solution to their problems. CrossRoads gives clients the opportunity to be self-directed in their job search and to avoid many obstacles that keep them from maintaining a job. Ms Ball, a partner at Dovetail Consulting, has taught CrossRoads to over 750 clients with remarkable results, as well as trained trainers to deliver the course in other cities in the USA. She said “I am delighted to be coming back to Slovakia to share CrossRoads in a different culture, but with an expectation that Slovak clients can benefit in exactly the same way as American clients have done.” The development and the delivery of CrossRoads training to Slovak social field workers are supported by the Embassy.