Testimonial

When we were given an opportunity to enter the RM Roadmap project via the ambassador window, we were excited and of course, seized an opportunity to boost Slovenian RMA activities.

Despite no formal association, the RMA community in Slovenia is present and functioning on an informal level, where active members know each other well, some even for several years. The mentioned network is open for new members, we even try to encourage newcomers to join regardless of their level of expertise. We use reliable communication channels (mailing lists, personal connections, RMA events…). With the RM Roadmap project, we try to involve as many RMAs as possible, share country-specific outputs with the Slovenian RMA society and of course represent best practices from other EU countries.

When the first RM Roadmap co-creation session was released, we figured out that the RM community is quite big, currently consisting of 95 members. In spite of that, we still think that there are plenty of other (currently not involved) Slovenian RMAs that could join this initiative and enrich our group. But on the other hand, we face another challenge – only a smaller part of our community is active and manages to contribute to the ongoing debate. We are convinced that the contribution rate would be much greater if a formal association would exist. Later in my personal opinion with the following explanation: formal association is in my view a higher level of a certain community compared to an informal one - that is because once RMA members manage to construct such a formal society, they already have some more definite goals and are willing to accept a burden of formal association as they know this can bring additional benefits.

We feel that with the introduction of the RM Roadmap project to our community, we managed to raise awareness in our RMA network. We are receiving inquiries regarding future actions and events. This encourages us to think about our next step – grounding Slovenian ARMA.