The Roma Mainstream Media Internship Program was created by the Roma Press Center, Budapest, an institution dedicated to the normalization of the relationship between the majority media and the Roma community. The Independent Journalism Foundation now adminsters the intensive, 10-month program, which was offered last year (2000) in Romania after proving successful in Hungary and Slovakia. At the conclusion of the program most of the Hungarian and Slovakian participants, as well as the Romanian participants in its pilot course, became professional journalists in print, radio and TV.

The program was offered for the second time at CIJ-Bucharest beginning in June, 2001. During the first half of the program, the 11 students attend courses in the basics of journalism, grammar and English. Other courses included, "How to read a newspaper" , "Newsroom structure" , "State Institutions", broadcast voice and "Roma history and Culture" .
After four months of intensive training, the young Roma are placed as interns in professional mainstream newsrooms for another six months.