During September – December 2016, over 600 town halls from 25 districts learned how to prevent corruption risks. The trainings were organized by the National Anticorruption Center (NAC), in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in the framework of a project financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The handover ceremony of security upgrades performed through the support of the European Union to the storage facility of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Moldova took place on 21 December 2016 at the Bulboaca storage site.

A VAT rate of 8% was established on the whole value chain of solid biofuels starting with January 2017. The respective amendment to the budgetary-fiscal and customs policy for 2017 was recently approved by the Parliament.

Mayors from 23 localities lay the basis of several community development projects by signing grant agreements of USD 20,000 each, offered by the Swiss Government via UNDP.

Sport teams from the both banks of the Nistru River came to Dubasari to test their performance in playing volleyball at a bowl organized at its 13rd edition. This year the topic of the contest “Friendship Bowl 2016” was “Preserving friendship through sport” and it served as an excellent opportunity to develop sustainable relationships among the participants.

Other 20 public institutions, including schools, kindergartens, community centers in the north, center and south of Moldova have passed the final selection stage and will be connected to biomass heating systems, and six of them will even install solar collectors.

The EU Leader approach, used for more than 20 years as an efficient rural development tool in many European countries – is being applied in ATU Gagauzia and Taraclia. The piloting of this approach is carried out with the financial support of the European Union.

The three winning projects of the hackathon HACK.CORRUPTION are about to transform from bold and innovative ideas into web platforms meant to involve citizens in reporting corruption cases. The platforms were launched on December 15th, 2016, at a press conference.

“Whenever I am away from home, I am overwhelmed with homesickness and returning home is the most beautiful and emotional moment for me. I left my home village, but it’s time for me to help it with the skills and expertise I have gathered”, says Tatiana. This summer, Tatiana spent full 8 working days of her short vacation on creating an architectural plan of the community centre to serve the inhabitants of the village for various purposes.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, the archives of enterprises, or even of entire villages, perished. Thousands of people have paid social contributions, but as pension reform in Moldova drags on, their pensions remain minimal. Others can’t officially prove they worked their entire lives; they await retirement with despair.

Not long ago, the Republic of Moldova – lacking both mountains and coastlines - was considered to be bereft of tourist attractions. Even its own people did not really realize that there is an exceptional cultural-natural treasury right in the middle of the country, just 50 km from the capital city.

9 o’clock in the evening of the Election Day in Moldova, polling stations are closing. However, the hardest work only starts. Members of the electoral bureaus begin counting the ballot papers. Citizens impatiently wait for the next morning to find out the preliminary results. This was the reality until recently, 2014.

The idea of tackling the problem of low fruit intake in Moldova came during a banal lunch. We were intrigued by the paradox that in a country that is a regional “garden”, abundant in fruits and vegetables, the average consumption of these goodies constituted only 60% of the minimum WHO recommended quantity.

The way the governance process takes place has changed dramatically in the last decade or so. The rise of new technologies, widening democratic space and rise of citizen expert together with our growing understanding of complexity of development challenges, mark the pronounced shift to distributed forms of governance, with governments-enablers and co-creation of solutions at the heart of a such system.