Elderly persons will help the elderly people and the children affected by migration as part of a project aimed at encouraging the development of interregional relations and stopping migration in Moldova. The project “Strengthening Community-Based Support to Multigenerational Households Left Behind Migration” was launched on September 24, Info-Prim Neo reports. The project is implemented by the NGOs Help Age Intentional in Moldova and the Balti-based Second Breath and aims to identify a positive connection between migration and development, said Dina Sava, project coordinator for the Second Breath. “The major objective of the project is to provide community-based support to the multigenerational households, i.e. the elderly persons and children, and to strengthen the community's capacity to support them. We have a network of 264 volunteers who are all elderly persons. They will visit over 2,000 families affected by migration, namely persons that look after their grandchildren. We will select a target group with whom we will work in continuation.” “It is a model called “elderly persons help elderly persons”. The volunteers identify problems faced by this group and then seek help from the competent bodies. They will attend seminars centering on legal aspects and the rights of the children and the elderly and will be trained to provide social assistance. Afterward, there will be implemented a series of small projects from mini-grants provided by ten NGOs operating in the regions where we work,” Dina Sava said. The projects will include a summer school for grandparents and grandchildren, theatrical and educational activities, where the elderly persons will learn to better look after the children and to improve communication with them. The main goal of these activities is to identify and solve the problems encountered by these families. Valentina Carchilan, the president of the Ialoveni veterans organization, said that this project will help integrate the elderly persons into the society and engage the local public administration in the project activities. Larisa Chirilenco, monitor of the project in Cazangic village of Leova district, said that they aim to improve the living conditions of the elderly persons and to stop migration so that the grandparents are not permanently worried about their grandchildren and do not act only as caregivers. “We are at the first meeting, but we know that a country is healthy through its children and want that the children remain in the country and gladden their grandparents. There will be held different seminars, meetings of generations and other events aimed at developing an efficient cooperation between generations. The project will last for 18 months and will be completed early in 2011. It will be implemented in 10 regions of Moldova.