CONTACT POINT FOR ROMA AND SINTI ISSUES Ambassador Janez Lenarčič (r), the ODIHR Director, talking with a resident during a visit to the Roma settlement at Brnješ/Bërnjesh to inspect the new waste-water collector built there with the aid of a grant from the Best Practices for Roma Integration project, 5 September 3013. (OSCE/Tomislav Georgiev) the grassroots level, supported capacity building of Roma youth organizations, and encouraged volunteer activities and grassroots engagement in Roma communities. The initiative responded to the need to encourage Roma youth groups, whether at universities or high schools, to take on greater roles as agents for change in Roma communities, as well as in the shaping of education and youth policies. Four project proposals were selected on merit under the Roma Youth Initiative to promote grassroots engagement to reduce school drop-out rates, improve performance in education or to enable access to health, education and social services. The selected projects were: “Slovo 21: Mum, dad, I want to go to school” in the Czech Republic; “Popica Onlus: Pretend your rights” in Italy; “KAMIRA – National Roma women’s federation: Roma women building the present” in Spain; and “Gypsy Eye - Heart to heart: the club of disadvantaged children who want to learn” in Romania. Raising Awareness about the Roma and Sinti Genocide Building on previous successful initiatives to promote awareness on the Roma and Sinti genocide among youth, ODIHR continued its support for the International Roma Youth Network ternYpe for the Roma Genocide Remembrance Initiative “Dik I Na Bistar” (Look and don’t forget). The initiative brought together more than 430 young Roma and non-Roma from 18 countries for the 2 August commemoration of the Roma genocide in the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The event aimed to strengthen the awareness of young people and youth organizations on the continued discrimination and patterns of racism against Roma and Sinti, hate speech and extremism. It informed young people with different backgrounds about the Roma genocide during World War II. Holocaust education was used as a tool to make young people understand the mechanisms of exclusion, racism, anti-Semitism and racism and discrimination against Roma and Sinti. 64  /   ODIHR Annual Report 2013