Adventures Galore

Hi everyone! Sorry I've been so bad about posting lately. This will be a quick post, but I need to give you the update on mythree phases you've missed:

Eastern European Grand Tour

I took a 10-day vacation adventure across Eastern Europe with my coworker Malgosia and her boyfriend, and it was amazing. We spent 5 days in Montenegro and the rest of the time getting there and back, hitting up:

• Romania
• Bulgaria
• Macedonia
• Kosovo
• Montenegro
• Croatia
• Bosnia & Herzegovina
• and Serbia

along the way. Beautiful, beautiful scenery, especially in the Montenegrin town of Kotor where we stayed. Its auto-free old town complete with cobblestone alleyways, limestone buildings, and relaxing sidewalk cafes was a great break from the slightly more bustling Chisinau. Check out the view of I snapped while hiking up an old fortress on the hills above the city.

Last week of work

I finished up my job with the UNDP last week. I need some more time to reflect on my experience, but I'd say my main takeaways are:

• I'm still really interested in international development


• I still love the concept of finding ways for the private sector to support the poor and make money at the same time (e.g. sustainable sourcing, marketing products needed by the poor, etc.)


• I'd like to find ways to work on these issues independently from big, international aid organizations. While working for the UN definitely confers many benefits, I think it might not be for me.

Turkey and Greece!

I met up with my college roommate Katie in Istanbul yesterday, and now we have 10 days to explore Turkey, eventually making our way across some islands over to Athens. When she flies out of there next week, I have 10 more ways to make my way back to Chisinau before flying back to school.

I probably won't be posting much but I'll try to give an update or two. Hope you're all doing well, wherever you are!

I (heart) Strategery

Last week we had some visitors from the UNDP “Growing Sustainable Business” regional headquarters in Bratislava. The regional program coordinator and a consultant are doing the rounds, spending a week with the GSB initiative in each of its locations in the area (Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, and Turkey) to do a strategic review of the program’s model and how it should proceed going forward. This was actually one of the highlights of the internship for me – though I do like doing the operational stuff, it was especially cool to take a step back and think more strategically about the best way to partner with the private sector to attack poverty.

The GSB initiative was started just a few years ago, rolling out to a few countries in an initial pilot program. It’s really interesting to take a look at what the various GSB “Brokers” (one on the ground in each country) have done with this light-touch model that encourages identifying and facilitating innovative ways for the private sector to act in a way that benefits both itself and the poor. The major ways in which they’ve done this have been:

• Developing local supply chains (e.g. our Wool Project, which simultaneously increases incomes for local farmers and saves cash for local yarn producers)
• Helping companies market products/services to the poor (e.g. microinsurance, gas stoves)
• Connecting local producers with foreign purchasers (e.g. our Wine Export Project)
• Facilitating foreign investment (e.g. identifying foreign investors interested in funding a Moldovan bio-ethanol plant that will provide a large buyer for local corn crops – and be great for the environment!)
• Creating jobs (e.g. our Internet Translation Platform project)

As you can see, this “just get out there and try something” approach has really led to an interesting diversity of projects. However, as the program matures and expands, it’s time to rationalize the project portfolio somewhat, or at least think more strategically about the most efficient ways to use the limited GSB resources to select and support high-impact projects.

Luckily, the consultant hired to think about this is great. She’s an MBA with experience both working at McKinsey and working as a GSB Broker in Africa, so she really understands the program’s strengths and limitations. We had several long conversations about what the initiative’s ideal structure would look like (e.g., a stronger regional office role in projects working to attract foreign investors), which really made me think more deeply about the best ways to engage the private sector in supporting development. Ideally, they’d figure this out themselves more often; as you can see with my examples above, it’s in business’s best interest to undertake these types of projects – not just for fuzzy PR-type benefits, but for actual cost savings and revenue generation. However, as all consultants know, sometimes businesses need a little push in figuring out and implementing even the things that are in their best interest. So now I’m doing a lot of thinking about the best ways to give them the push they need. The UNDP GSB program is a great start, but there’s definitely room for a lot more to be done in this area – and it's definitely an exciting field to be in!

Fun Times

Sorry that I haven’t posted in over a week! My fans (hi, Mom!) have been demanding more, so here’s the quick update on my life in Moldova:

• I met up with a friend in Prague last weekend and it was GREAT! Amazing city, amazing weather, amazing beer. :) We even saw the opera Don Giovanni in the theater where it premiered in 1787. And it wasn’t boring at all…it was actually kinda hilarious! Definitely a highlight.

• I read the new (and final) Harry Potter - WOW! It was fantastic. I cried at least 5 times. Don’t judge me for that until you’ve read it yourself, by the way…there’s really some tragic stuff in there.

• I went to a friend’s birthday party and was chatting with his friend about local vineyards – until she realized that she’d already read my blog post about my Purcari visit. I’m a local celebrity, I tell you.

• My boss and I were supposed to go to Albania next week to take first steps toward replicating some of our projects there. Of course, given that we’d be over that way, we had to plan a side trip to the beach in Montenegro. Now the Albania trip got axed but since the Montenegro trip’s already all planned, we’re leaving this afternoon for a little holiday anyway. Ah, life is good. :)
  

Job creation and Village life

Last weekend I went to visit my Peace Corps Volunteer friend Katie in Gura Bicului, the village where she’s volunteering for 2 years. After a scenic 90-minute bus ride, I hopped out in her 6000-person village, ready to experience local life. I discovered that there aren’t many young adults, as most people in their 20’s leave to go to college in Chisinau or (more likely) to work abroad. 25% of working-age Moldovans (10% of the entire population) are working abroad, which leaves small villages full of old people taking care of their grandkids. There are educated people in Moldova – even from the small villages, as infrastructure’s not too bad so people are fairly mobile within the country and there aren’t too many extremely remote places – but there just aren’t enough good jobs to keep them here. Why be unemployed (or a small plot farmer) when you can work for minimum wage in Italy and send home enough dough to support your whole family? This is a problem, though, because Moldova will have a hard time pulling itself up by its bootstraps if nobody’s here to pull. The solution needs to include some sort of job creation here in Moldova, but this is obviously easier said than done.

I’m working on several projects that have the potential to create these jobs, such as our Internet Translation Platform Project. This project brings a Moldovan call center company with experience in working with international customers together with various Moldovan translation companies that have lots of language skills (Russian, Romanian, English, French…) to create a one-stop online shop selling low-cost, high-quality translation services abroad. Moldovan translators make about $250/month, as opposed to the $80/month many of the other (limited) young-but-educated positions (e.g. teachers) are paid, so these quality jobs are really needed. Hopefully this project will be a stop in the right direction toward giving Moldovans opportunities to stay here in Moldova and be successful.

So anyway, back to me. :) What does one do for fun during a weekend in the village, you may ask? Well, I can tell you how I spent my 40 hours there:

• 20 hours sleeping/napping

• 4 hours sitting on the porch, watching kittens play

• 1 hour procuring ingredients for placinta, (pla-cheen-ta), a delish typical Moldovan dish – imagine a dinner-plate-size deep-fried empanada you cut into wedges and devour. Ingredient procurement included figuring out who in the ‘hood had cows and thus would be a good source for our filling of choice: “brinza de vaca” (cow cheese). I think this was difficult because you wouldn’t normally attempt to get an ingredient like that on demand – you’d either make it yourself or else wait for it to come to you during the weekend market.

• 1 hour learning to make placinta

• 2 hours eating a gourmet dinner featuring our homemade placinta, homemade chicken noodle soup, and the ubiquitous homemade red wine. When I mentioned that I’m not too into the homemade wine here, I neglected to mention the method of consumption: you shoot it. That’s right – your host fills everyone’s 2-oz glass cup, you toast, you down the whole thing, and then 10 minutes later you refill and repeat. Like I said, people here like their alcohol.

• 1 hour learning to play the accordion. Natural talent can apparently be augmented with homemade wine consumption. (Or maybe wine consumption just lowers musical standards…either way, I sounded fabulous!)

• 3 hours sitting in the kitchen talking to Otilia, the woman who owns the house Katie’s living in, and Luba and Dimitrash, the grandma/grandson who are also living there. Otilia is a psychology professor in Chisinau, and Luba’s a workaholic employed by the government in a nearby town.

• 1 hour buying snacks to eat by the river. This takes a while because the shopkeepers love to talk. This woman spent 15 minutes bursting with pride that Katie was conversational in Romanian – “Those Russians have been here fifty years and they still can’t speak our language!” (Although she was one of the only shopkeepers with a high-tech electronic scale instead of balance scales, she still rocked the abacus for adding up our total.)

• 6 hours chilling on the banks of the Dniester River with a beer in hand, watching Moldovan kids in speedos splash around on one side and Transdniestrian kids in speedos splash around on the other. I almost swam across to Transdniestria but got too lazy.

• 1 hour at the Saturday market, which Domna Otilia recommended we should check out because “it has everything today!” “Everything” consisted of 10 people selling a narrow range of produce and other items – Katie bought fresh milk (boil before use), flypaper, and plastic sandals, and I bought a made-in-China shirt for $5. It was really supposed to be a little girl’s dress, but whatevs.

Wanna come visit?