Young women trained and employed as part of anti-traffic project

As many as 120 socially vulnerable women aged between 18 and 25 from the rural areas of the municipalities of Balti and Chisinau benefited from training during October-November and got employed at a chain of grocery stores. The young women received professional training adjusted to the employer’s necessities and personal training designed to consolidate their knowledge, personal abilities and trust in themselves in order to encourage them to become leaders and built durable social welfare in Moldova. After the training, the women benefited from two-week internship and then they were employed as shop assitants at grocery stores in Balti and Chisinau. The initiative forms part of a series of measures designed to combat trafficking in women in Moldova and was launched by the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and its partners. According to organisers, the project provides personal training to socially vulnerable young women and guaranteed employment as alternative to the departure abroad. The project also aims to involve large and medium-sized companies in social responsibility initiatives. The project designed to generate workplaces for women unites a number of local, national and international organizations among which the National Employment Agency, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Moldova, the Balti-based NGO Pro-Business Nord, the vocational school No. 2 in Balti, the NGO “Partnership for Development”, the company Fourchette-M, Winrock International and its local partner, the NGO “Honour and Rights of the Contemporary Woman”. The initiative is supported financially by the Moldovan Government, the U.S. Labour Department, the Austrian Development Cooperation and by the “New Perspectives for Women” Project of the U.S. Agency for International Development.