My name is János Orsós. I’m from Hidas in Baranya county. Together with my six siblings, I lived in a bed sitting room with our parents, the nine of us in 27 square meters. After finishing primary school, I worked at Bonyhádi Zománcáru Factory at the age of 15 alongside my parents.

After the regime change, when I was 18 years old, I ended up on the street, unemployed. When I was 22, I met a community of Roma youth in the Amrita Associations in Pécs who were continuing their studies. I started attending night classes at a high school. The Soros Foundation’s student-teacher joint scholarship was a great help to me in achieving a successful exit exam. My continuing studies did not stop there: I became a Waldorf educator. As well, during my college years, I had a scholarship, which not only helped me, but also my family. Today, I can see that if there had been no Soros back then, I would now be standing in line to work for the public works program, competing with my relatives. With my partners, I founded the Dr. Ambedkar High School where over the past years, 100 disadvantaged young people have successfully completed their exit exams.