János Orsós

János Orsós was born in 1975 in the village of Hidas, in a gypsy settlement, to a Beás gypsy family. He first encountered the Hungarian language and the expectations of the majority society at the age of five. After failing elementary school years due to institutional discrimination and lack of knowledge, he worked as an auxiliary worker for many years, then – now in his twenties – he passed his high school leaving exam and obtained a Waldorf teaching diploma. 

Before that, he was actively involved in local public life in the Roma minority self-government, and even then he primarily helped young Roma people to continue their education. After working at the equal opportunities school in Alsószentmárton since 2004, in 2007 he became one of the founders of the Doktor Ámbédkar School in Sajókazá, which has since been operating in Miskolc. János is not only the founder and one of the leaders, but also a teacher of this so-called “second chance” school, where young people with unsuccessful school careers, most often coming from extreme poverty, are given the opportunity to graduate and get a profession despite the hostile legal and social environment, and they are also taught humanity and democracy.

The school is maintained by the Jai Bhim Buddhist Community. Its motto is: "Clear insight, right decision, right speech, good conduct, honorable livelihood, strong training, disciplined attention, profound deep meditation. (Buddha)".

In addition to his daily work at the school, János actively participates in Hungarian and European public life. He believes in line with the creed of the Tanítanék Movement: without good education, there is no social development, without co-education there is no peaceful coexistence, the serious social problems of Hungary cannot be solved without solving the problems of the Roma-Gypsy community, and the solution of these problems cannot happen without the active participation of the affected community.

Its goal is to create an open society based on equality with the active participation and involvement of the largest Hungarian minority, the state-forming Roma and Gypsies.

Perhaps most importantly, János was able to conquer the highly regarded, modern circles of society by starting from a truly traditional, village-edge, forest-edge gypsy lifestyle. In today's Hungarian situation, when the channels of social mobility are blocked, it is very important in pedagogy that there are those who succeed in this.

We who work in education, and especially those who work on the periphery, in vulnerable environments, see this every day in the behavior of students, who do not even believe that it is possible to move forward from their situation.
And from the other direction, from well-meaning non-Gypsy people, there is also a huge demand to see a successful example. 
When János speaks out on social media platforms, he has hundreds of thousands of views within hours, because Hungarian society is starved of positive examples.