Sixty young people from socially deprived groups of Moldova and Romania acquired leadership and teamwork skills within a transfrontier project implemented by the Chisinau Social Services Center for Child and Family (CSSCF) and the Cote Foundation of Romania. The results of the project that lasted for 14 months were presented in a news conference at IPN on February 17.

CSSCF executive director Viorica Matas said the project was aimed at increasing the capacities of young people from the transfrontier area (Romania – Moldova) to become actively involved in community life. The beneficiaries were selected from among institutionalized young people and people coming from poor families or whose parents work abroad. The project also involved over 20 specialists, including social workers, teachers and psychologists, who exchanged good social inclusion practices.

Trainer Mariana Boghi said the young people learned about the role and responsibilities of a leader and how to cooperate within a team and motivate the team to achieve particular objectives and to deal with a conflict. The young people were also taught how to implement the mini-projects to which they applied.

Beneficiary Elena Groian saids he proposed and then implemented a project entitled “Clean environment, healthy future”. She and her team gave lessons to inform about environment protection in a number of rural schools and carried out cleanup activities.

Galina Cimbir said the project she implemented was aimed at preventing trafficking in human beings. She and her team travelled to schools and informed students about how cases of human trafficking can be prevented. They staged fashmob meetings and distributed brochures about trafficking.

The total budget of the project was €150,000. The EU provided €135,000, while the local communities contributed the rest of the sum.