Is there a trend?

Yesterday I interviewed one of the co-founders of Ovidiu Rom and was impressed to find out that the evangelicals are making headway here in Romania. She was telling me that they are reforming the gypsy ("Roma") males by giving them moral guidelines for life, e.g. don't smoke, don't drink, make sure to take care of your family and especially your children. Before the evangelicals, the Roma population had no moral standards to abide by and were not making progress as a group of people (her words, not mine). This of course, reminded me of an article we read in Dr. Burke's class about the evangelicals in Brazil. I was so delighted that I had this background knowledge upon which to converse further about the cultural situation here. She was telling me that the the Roma people lack respectable representatives for the people. What happens is that after a Roma person progresses past an impoverished situation, he/she will renounce their Roma ethnicity in order to assimilate into the Romanian culture. This, of course, reminded me once more of the exact same article, where the African population in Brazil were finally making headway because members of their population were attaining seats of power, such as the African politician noted in the article. The major difference between the two countries that makes African Brazilians successful and the Roma unsuccessful is that the African population is easily detectable simply based on physical features. On the other hand, the Roma population consists of members spanning a range of skin tones and hair colors. Therefore, those of lighter skin color can easily blend in with the European portion of society.

Maybe this conclusion comes a bit hasty, but I am starting to feel that there are universal components to helping overcome poverty.
1) Need to educate the group.
2) Need a set of values, some sort of guidelines that the group believes in and is willing to live by and grow from.
3) Need examples--people from the group who have progressed beyond the majority situation--that the group can look up to.