Safe Jobs for Moldova's Vulnerable Young Women

By Laura Sheahen

"These girls thought they were no one."

Elena Rososhenko speaks quickly as she moves around her office in Balti, a city in the former Soviet country of Moldova. She's talking about the young women who come to her for jobs, a scarce commodity in a country where unemployment is rampant and many adults have to emigrate for work.

When young women first arrive at Elena's center, they have few skills and even less self-confidence. "They don't believe they'll really get a job," Elena says.

But as Elena runs around fielding calls, referring employers and directing women to a nearby computer classroom, it's clear that the women here are in demand. Elena is a manager at Pro-Business Nord, a Catholic Relief Services partner that helps vulnerable Moldovans learn skills and get jobs. Women who complete her short training programs find work in places like banks, grocery stores and sewing factories.

A Generation at Risk

Unemployment causes suffering and poverty throughout the world, but in Moldova, the stakes are especially high. The tiny country's economy collapsed with the Soviet Union and for more than a decade thousands of Moldovans have left their homeland—the poorest country in Europe—to search for work abroad. Though many find safe jobs, others become prey for human traffickers—criminals who force desperate job seekers into unpaid farm labor, begging or prostitution.

Young women in their late teens are particularly at risk. Many of them who think of leaving the country to find work "have no concrete ideas," says Elena. "They say to themselves, 'Maybe I'll go to Moscow.' "

When she was 17, Marina Svarciuc wasn't sure what was next in her life. Living in Balti, she had gone to high school but had no way to earn money. Like many others, she decided to go to Moscow, where she found a job repainting statues outdoors. Though her father was also in Moscow and helped her, life as an immigrant in Russia was difficult. "You are nobody there," Marina says. Because employers abroad know Moldovans are desperate for jobs, "They say, 'You'll work as we tell you.' "

Keeping Mothers and Children Together

Marina got married and had twins, a boy and a girl. She returned to Moldova, but when her young husband died of pneumonia, she had no way to support her children.

Then Marina heard about CRS' Jobs Plus program. Teachers showed her how to work with customers, handle money and operate a cash register.

Jobs Plus also teaches women how to make a household budget, prioritize and maintain savings. After a paid internship, Jobs Plus guaranteed Marina a job with one of the project's business partners—socially conscious employers who have joined with CRS to strengthen communities.

Marina worked as a cashier and at the deli counter of a grocery store called Fourchette. Now 23, she wants to work her way up: "I plan to do whatever it takes to get to the director level," she says, including studying business administration and economics.

"Without this program, I would probably not have a legal job," continues Marina. "I would probably be working in an outdoor market, either in Moldova or maybe Moscow."

The job doesn't just support her family financially—it keeps Marina and her children, now three and a half years old, together. If she'd gone back abroad, she says, "I wouldn't have seen my kids much. They might not remember the face of their mother."

Staying with her children was one reason Olessa Rozovel, a 31-year-old mother of three, became part of Jobs Plus. Living in the rural village of Tirgul Vertiuieni, coping with an abusive alcoholic husband, Olessa had few options.

Her husband beat her so badly that she once jumped from the second floor of their house to escape him. They finally divorced, but that meant an end to the small income he brought home from his construction work abroad.

In smaller Moldovan villages, single mothers and elderly people struggle to eke out an existence. There are no jobs, and while their small farms help with food, they bring in little money. Villagers must pay for clothing, medicine, electricity, animal feed and school supplies, along with wood fuel in the winter; a month's supply of wood might cost $40 in a country where a monthly welfare payment might be no more than $65.

Faced with these bills, going overseas for work seemed inevitable to Olessa. Like many other mothers, she felt she had to leave her children with relatives. Some parents also leave children at grim, state-run boarding schools so they can make a living. "The only thought I had was to go abroad to Moscow and leave my children, to give them a better life," says Olessa. "It was especially hard to think about leaving my baby daughter."

A New Sense of Self

But then Olessa heard about Jobs Plus. She decided to attend a meeting where participants talked about challenges in their lives. "The moment I came into the room and heard people discussing their family problems, I cried," she says. She learned more about the program and the training it offered. "Then it happened like lightning—it was like a switch flipped in my head. I could do something myself. Not my husband, not my mother. Me."

Olessa learned to become a seamstress and now works at a small, newly built clothing factory in her village. CRS works with employers committed to human rights and the well-being of the people they hire. So the sewing factory is well-lit, well-heated in the winter—and has the only flush toilets in the village.

The job means Olessa can stay in her village with her kids. "I am building my own life," she says.

Over the last four years, CRS Moldova has created 800 jobs for vulnerable women like Marina and Olessa. "Our plan for the next three years is to create 2,000 more," says Britton Buckner of CRS Moldova. With funding and support from the Argidius Foundation—the philanthropic arm of the COFRA Group, an international corporation—Jobs Plus helps thousands of Moldovans support and remain with their families.

The financial benefits are clear; the inward changes are less tangible.

"It's hard, at the beginning, to convince women to take this chance," says Aliona Manole, who coordinated a Jobs Plus program in and around the Moldovan city of Floreshti. But when women do take the chance, says Elena Rososhenko, "they change so much, outwardly and inwardly."

"At first, some of them didn't even smile. But something changed inside them. Some of them even stopped smoking" because they knew employers didn't like it, says Elena.

Marina Svarciuc echoes the words of many Jobs Plus beneficiaries: "I am the master of my life, I have control." Because of Jobs Plus, women who didn't think they had much to offer now know they have value. They learn they are someone smart, capable, able to take care of themselves. Someone.

Laura Sheahen is CRS' regional information officer for Europe and the Middle East. She is based in Cairo.