Education

ROMANIPEN ESCOLAR

A Romani agenda to transform the school

Learning our history is also growing up with it.

The history and culture of the Romani people are part of our society. Yet generations of girls and boys have gone through school barely finding them in their books, their classrooms or their teaching materials. Romanipen Escolar was born to help change that.

An educational project by CHANIPEN: Research, Memory and Justice, funded by ROVA, which brings primary-school pupils closer to the history, the Romani-Caló language, the culture and the contributions of the Romani people through a methodology adapted to their age, participatory and designed to accompany them throughout the school year.

Because getting to know diversity should not be a one-day activity. We want it to be part of everyday learning.

An agenda that also teaches

In Romanipen Escolar, something as everyday as the school agenda becomes a learning tool. Over 42 weeks, pupils progressively discover content about the Romani people, built into their school routine.

Every week offers a new chance to learn: a word in Romani-Caló, a “Did you know?”, a Romani person whose path deserves to be known, a Romanín Mission, and dates and events that open our history from different perspectives.

Learning is not limited to paper. The content connects to audiovisual resources through QR codes, so pupils can keep discovering, listening and exploring.

The agenda is no longer just the place to write down homework. It becomes a door that opens something new every week.

Learn with Romanín!

This whole journey has a companion: Romanín, the character of Romanipen Escolar. Romanín guides pupils through the year, introduces new people, sets missions, asks questions and invites them to discover words, stories and curiosities.

Through videos and interactive content reachable from the agenda itself, Romanín connects the printed material with an audiovisual experience created especially for children. Week after week, Romanín turns up to accompany them in new discoveries and make learning a close, visual and participatory experience.

With Romanín, every week there is something new to discover.

People who are also part of our history

Romani history is not only a history of persecution and discrimination. It is also a history of creation, thought, resistance, art, science, literature, activism, sport and social transformation.

That is why, throughout the year, Romanipen Escolar brings pupils the paths of 41 Romani people, showing the diversity of experiences and contributions that are part of our history. Each biography comes with audiovisual content led by Romanín and reachable by QR.

The aim is simple but important: that when a girl or a boy thinks about the Romani people, they have many more stories to think from.

From the agenda to the classroom

Romanipen Escolar is not only an agenda. The project includes a Teacher's Guide that carries its content into the classroom and gives teachers resources to work on the history, the culture, the Romani-Caló language and the experiences of the Romani people from an educational perspective adapted to primary school.

Agenda, Teacher's Guide, audiovisual resources and activities are all part of one educational proposal. The project is complemented by sessions with pupils, support spaces for teachers and activities for families, involving the whole school community.

Learning all year long

One of the principles of Romanipen Escolar is to move beyond one-off interventions. Speaking about the Romani people only around an anniversary or during an isolated activity hardly allows anyone to understand a history of centuries.

That is why Romanipen Escolar proposes a model of continued learning. Throughout the year, small pieces of content appear again and again in school life. A word this week. A story the next. A mission. A person. A date. A question.

Knowledge is built little by little. And what appears naturally and continuously at school stops being perceived as something foreign to it.

A project that also researches

Romanipen Escolar is also a project of educational research and evaluation. Its implementation includes tools adapted to different ages to observe what pupils know before taking part, what they learn during the process and how their knowledge and perceptions evolve.

This evaluation will make it possible to identify what works, improve the materials and generate evidence about new ways of bringing Romani history, culture and knowledge into education. The aim is for the experience developed in Cartagena to serve as the basis for an educational model that can be replicated and adapted in other schools, towns and territories.

The pilot: Cartagena

During the 2026–2027 school year, Romanipen Escolar runs its first pilot at CEIP Asdrúbal in Cartagena, with pupils from Year 1 to Year 6 of primary school. The pilot brings the agenda, the Teacher's Guide, the audiovisual resources and the educational activities into the classroom, working together with pupils, teachers and families.

Cartagena thus becomes the first place where we test an idea we want to take much further: that knowing Romani history, culture and the Romani-Caló language can be part of any child's everyday school experience.

Research, education and creation

Romanipen Escolar combines historical research, pedagogy, the Romani-Caló language, audiovisual creation, illustration and educational design. The project has been developed by a multidisciplinary team of Romani professionals from several countries: researchers, Romani-Caló language specialists, education professionals and audiovisual creators.

Because bringing Romani knowledge into classrooms also means recognising Romani people as producers of knowledge about our own history, language and experiences.

Project direction

Fernando Ruiz Molina

General coordination

María Georgiana Dumitru

Research and content development

Rafael Silva Veigas · Ana Victoria Amador Vargas · Nataliia Tomenko

Romani and Caló language content

Alen Umer · Michal Mižigár · Diego Luis Fernández Jiménez

Creation and design of the character Romanín

Fernando Ruiz Molina

Illustration, layout and audiovisual content

Fernando Ruiz Molina

In collaboration with

Equality Service, Cartagena City Council

Funded and supported by

European Union · ROVA · FAGIC

Bring Romanipen Escolar to your classroom

The Romanipen Escolar Agenda and the Teacher's Guide are available through CHANIPEN Press, CHANIPEN's imprint. The materials can be used by schools, teachers, families and other organisations wishing to bring knowledge about Romani history, culture and the Romani-Caló language into their educational spaces.

Discover and get the materials at CHANIPEN Press ↗

Romanipen Escolar is a project by CHANIPEN: Research, Memory and Justice, funded by ROVA. This funding made possible the development of the educational materials, the Romanipen Escolar Agenda, the Teacher's Guide, the audiovisual resources and the implementation and evaluation of the project's first pilot during the 2026–2027 school year.

Romanipen Escolar is born in Cartagena with the ambition to grow and become a model that can be adapted and taken to new classrooms, schools and territories.

• An agenda to organise the school year.
• A guide to bring its content into the classroom.
• Videos to keep discovering.
• Activities to learn by taking part.
• And 42 weeks to make the history, culture and knowledge of the Romani people part of school too.

Romanipen Escolar — A Romani agenda to transform the school