Roma children, chess for integration, the inspiring activity of a Romanian association

Euronews

09-06-2025

Adriana Pascu, 16 years old, of Roma ethnicity, is a skilled chess player.
Thanks to the game, she has developed strong analysis and concentration skills that also help her in her studies. Playing chess was not a matter of course for her and the other children of the Roma community in the Romanian city of Satu Mare. They learnt through the 'Chess for change' project started in 2019 by the Stea association, active in the social integration of Roma children.
These children made progress in all areas, especially at school.
"I am much more reflective, more focused, and memorise lessons faster," Adriana explains. Chess activates memory, the ability to analyse and anticipate.
For Alex Geiger, a chess teacher, it is one of the most democratic sports: "Chess teaches children fair-play; it is the only sport, I would say, where we are all equal, no matter if you are male or female, if you have a handicap."
The first objective of the Stea association was precisely to combat early school leaving and motivate children to at least complete the compulsory school cycle.
"Chess allows these youngsters to realise that if they put their mind to it and are persistent, they can achieve good results," explains Cristina Bala, the director of the Stea centre.
"Children and teenagers," she says, "have managed to participate in competitions, even international ones, and have also won prizes; they have been able to gain positive experiences and gain the recognition and esteem of others.
Initially, teachers at school were sceptical, not thinking that Roma children could ever succeed in chess: today they support the project because the children involved are more motivated and better at studying as well. As Delia Sabou, Adriana's teacher, says: "We have noticed in all the children involved in the project that there is an important cognitive progression, an increase in concentration and an improvement in social interaction with their peers and teachers.
The director of the Stea centre, Cristina Bala, immediately realised the potential of chess and introduced the activity in 2019. The total cost of the project for the first year was EUR 70,000, with the European Union contributing EUR 60,000 thanks to Cohesion Policy funds.
The chess piece that Adriana prefers is the queen, because it is the most powerful piece. She plans to be an accountant when she grows up. It is clear that her life has taken on a new impetus and she will be the real queen of her future.
The Romanian association Stea deals with the integration of children from vulnerable communities. In Satu Mare, a small town on the Hungarian border, the fight for inclusion is particularly aimed at the children of the Roma community.
Stea has been working in this field for 20 years. In 2019, thanks to funding from the European Cohesion Policy, it introduced chess teaching among its activities; the game has been a success among the Roma children and has transmitted energy and enthusiasm to the entire community.
Cristina Bala, director of Stea and project manager of Chess for change, looks back on the experience: at first the teachers themselves were not convinced.
And yet in the very first year, within eight months, thanks to the perseverance of Cristina and her team, the children, 35 in all, learnt to play and 12 of them took part in international competitions and even won prizes.
Chess develops the ability to concentrate, reflect, and analyse and this has had a positive impact on the daily lives of the youngsters involved in the programme.
"Chess also has a positive effect on children with behavioural disorders. Some of them could not sit for more than five minutes, in front of the chessboard they can concentrate for more than forty minutes,' Cristina says.
"Children who started playing chess in 2019 today continue their studies in high school. And this is the most important result, because our association was looking for ways to change the approach to schooling of these children.'
Cristina says that another achievement, thanks to the regional competition she has been organising since 2019, is to have created a space where Roma children and young people meet with Romanian children and young people: the love of chess creates bridges for other activities in common. An inclusion and integration initiative with incredible results: in addition to the development of the children's cognitive and emotional skills, there is also an improvement in their interaction in society because their self-esteem increases. It goes without saying that these adolescents continue to go to school beyond the compulsory age, eventually graduating.
Many continue afterwards and go on to university.
In an attempt to encourage young Roma to go to university, a law in Romania provides for a percentage of places reserved for them, without having to pass any selection. Today, they are often not awarded because no candidates apply. The Chess for Change project is slowly changing the approach of the most vulnerable communities towards education.
Just as the interchange between Roma children and their Romanian peers, parents included, now takes place without barriers and without prejudice.
The project started in 2019 with 60,000 euro from European Cohesion Policy funding. The total cost of the project was 70,000 euro.
Every year, Stea is looking for new patrons so as not to be forced to discontinue the programme.
Off to Barcelona in the summer? Make sure to pick a proper travel agent. Taking a trip to London? Watch out for fake car rentals.
The risk of being scammed at popular tourism spots jumps by 28% during peak seasons.
Some examples are fake destination photos, broken confirmation links and bogus deals.
Travel agencies seem to be the places most at risk, with scam rates "four times higher than the global average," according to a new report by the Mastercard Economics Institute.
Fraudsters often establish fake tourism companies, attracting customers with juicy offers for excursions, guided tours or supposedly exclusive experiences, while offering unusually low prices.
Once the transaction is processed, these tours either never take place or differ entirely from expectations.
The report compared around twenty different cities to establish where the risk is highest.
In general, tourists reported the lowest travel-related frauds in San Francisco, Dublin, Seoul, Budapest and Edinburgh, while the highest rates were reported in Cancun, Hanoi, Dhaka and Bangkok.
So, how are tourists most likely to fall into a trap in these places?
Travel-agency related frauds are the most likely in Hong Kong (70%), Delhi (64%), Barcelona (64%) and Cancun (48%).
Taxi and car rentals aren't immune either: Tourists may pay for a service that never materialises after booking, or overpay due to hidden fees, inflated prices or rigged taximeters.
Jakarta (66%) has the highest taxi fraud rate across all cities analysed, followed by Bangkok (48%), Istanbul (39%) and London (34%).
Food scams also pose problems, such as meals that never arrive, or being overcharged at a restaurant through high service fees.
That is particularly true in American cities like LA and New York, where food scams represent respectively 75% and 63% of the total.
At the same time, in fraudsters in the accommodation sector may use holiday rental platforms or travel websites to create fake listings and lead tourists to book non-existent properties, or ones that greatly differ from the descriptions advertised.
Tourists headed to Phuket in Thailand and Antalya in Turkey should be particularly wary, as accommodation scam rates there represent 39% and 35% of the total, respectively.
Looking on the bright side, booking flights and trains remains relatively safe across all surveyed cities, with scam rates generally staying below 10%.
However, travellers are at risk of fraud well before they leave home. An analysis of aggregate transaction data shows that in 2024, fraud linked to early trip planning rose by over 12% compared to the previous year.
"Fake travel agency websites and excursions that closely resemble genuine services can make it harder for consumers to spot red flags", Mastercard's Executive VP Services Europe Michele Centenaro tells Euronews.
He adds that the company aims to eliminate manual card entry by 2030 to boost security: "Digital wallets, protected by tokenisation and advanced AI-driven fraud prevention tools are improving consumer protection".