Bolt wins Fulbright to Bulgaria
Julia Bolt, a 2008 Wheaton College graduate from Cambridge, Mass., has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Bulgaria.
Julia Bolt, a 2008 Wheaton College graduate from Cambridge, Mass., has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Bulgaria. She plans to analyze the progress being made in the area of desegregation of the public school system there and to explore how it has affected opportunities for Roma children to receive quality education.
Bolt, who double majored in international relations and German, initially became interested in the Roma people when she traveled and studied abroad in Europe during her junior year at Wheaton. She wrote her senior thesis on the Roma people. The Roma population, Bulgaria's second largest minority and third largest ethnic group, has faced challenging problems brought on by discrimination in employment, education and housing practices.
"The Bulgarian communist government intended to integrate Roma into society and the economy by creating schools that catered to their special needs. But instead the 'special' schools perpetrated Roma's separation from Bulgarians, and provided Roma children with a second rate education and trivial job skills," Bolt noted in her Fulbright application.
In the past decade, Bulgarian officials have devoted money and resources to improving the school system and have created eight trial desegregation programs, she said. She wants to find out how well those efforts are working by visiting a representative sampling of both Romani and Bulgarian schools to compare the quality of education. She also plans to interview students, parents, teachers and principals, and to meet with stakeholders from both sides of the issue.
Her research will be based in Sofia, Bulgaria, and will be supported by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, a leading independent NGO for the protection of human rights in the area of education. In a letter of support, Krassimir Kanev, chair of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee described Bolt's proposed research as "both timely and important."
In addition to monitoring and analyzing the progress being made and improving equality in the public schools, Bolt said she also would like to be able to offer concrete suggestions on how Bulgaria could further improve the current desegregation programs.
"The school desegregation programs are intended to enable Romani and Bulgarian children to get to know each other so that stereotypes and misunderstandings might be reduced or eliminated. I believe that they can do this if the correct strategies are used," said Bolt. "That's why I feel so strongly about devoting a year to these policies and hopefully effecting positive change for the betterment of all of Bulgaria."
Bolt said she chose to major in international relations because she craved to know about other cultures, languages and people, and to see the world through a critical lens with an eye toward improving it. This led her to many diverse opportunities while at Wheaton. She had a Davis International Fellowship in which she interned as the assistant to the high commissioner at the Hessen Social Ministry in Wiesbaden, Germany. She was a trainee at the International Labor Organization's Supporting Children's Rights through Education, the Arts and the Media program in Geneva. She also was an intern at the Human Rights Education Associates in Concord, Mass., in the winter of 2007, and a research intern at UNICEP in Regensburg in the summer of 2007.
She hopes to use the experiences gained during her Fulbright in Bulgaria to pursue a degree in international rights law in Europe. "I also hope to continue my study of Roma rights issues in Europe in the future," she said. "Ultimately I want to devote my life to being a human rights monitor of educational policy somewhere that I can also fight against child labor and ensure that all children have access to an education."
