A little futbol

Soccer may not be a huge deal in the States, but here in Moldova, these people are crazy for it... literally crazy. The picture above is from a game I went to recently. Moldova vs. Finland, it was a Euro 2012 qualifier and was held at the national stadium here in Chisinau. It was a great game, Moldova was the underdog, but ended up winning 2-0. Towards the end of the game, they had to bring out the riot police and they held the Finland fans in their section until everyone else cleared out. If you would like, some of the highlights can be found by pasting this link into your browser, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mATxpyfotp0. It was nice to be able to get out and really enjoy the city and share a national past time with the locals. It is really starting to get cold here and it seems as if we skipped right over fall and moved on to winter already. The heating system in our apartment is controlled by the local municipality, so we are not really sure when they turn it on. Hopefully soon! I am still really enjoying my time here and the work I am doing is getting more interesting as I get more deeply involved in the processes. I am looking forward to Thanksgiving. Although it is not celebrated here, I will be sure to get together with a group of my American friends and make a giant meal. I hope everyone is doing well and I thank you all for your support. Also, in case you don't have it, my email address is bkbkline@gmail.com. Feel free to email me at anytime!

Beekeeping in my future?

Hello everyone. I hope this post finds you all doing well and enjoying the cooler weather as we approach the Fall season. First, I want to give a shout out to my cousin Mark. I saw your name in the game preview for the Lebanon High football team and I just want to say keep up the good work man. I'll be getting updates from my Dad and look forward to seeing you play when I get home.

These past two weeks have been a bit crazy for me. Our partner organization in the US has given out its millionth loan and has sent a photographer, another employee, and myself travelling all over Moldova to meet with clients. The goal is to get pictures and a story from our clients in as many different industries as possible. Yes, I know it sounds like a relatively simple task, but with the unlabeled, unpaved roads here in Moldova it was quite an adventure.

Basically, the only way to find these clients out in the villages was to figure out what Rayon (a rayon is equivalent to our counties) they live in and get to that Rayon. These Rayons are about the same size as our counties at home, so you can imagine how large the area is. Once we thought we were in the correct Rayon, we had to hope we had cell phone coverage and then call the client. The client would then try to explain, using certain landmarks and the colors of houses, where he was located. Sometimes we found our way easily, other times it took multiple hours and a few stops to ask random people for directions.

In the end, we were able to visit almost 20 clients, all in different industries. Some examples of the industries include; auto repair shop, ironsmith, cement block production, various agriculture, livestock, hardware store, these are just a few. Finally, as you can see from the picture located at the beginning, we also met with a beekeeper. When we arrived, he began talking to me and I couldn't really understand what he was saying, but I just kept nodding my head yes. Apparently, I was nodding yes as he was asking me if I wanted to go in the middle of his bee farm. Next thing I know, they hand me a mask and I am walking through 50 hives that all together contain almost 100,000 bees, with a short sleeve shirt on. Needless to say, I felt a little like a POW. They crawled on my clothes and arms, but luckily I did not get stung. Not that I would willingly do it in a t-shirt again anytime soon, but it was actually very fun and they gave me a giant mason jar full of honey when I left. It is some of the best honey I have ever had and well worth the trip into the hive.

Client Profile

Victor Antoci

Location: Nisporeni, Moldova

Family: Married with 3 children

Type of Business: Cement Block Production

Below is an example of one of our clients. It is great to know that my work not only provides me the opportunity to learn, but also can truly make a difference in the lives of others in Moldova.

Victor Antoci has received two loans from us so far for his small business. He is the head pastor of a small church in addition to owning a cement block production factory in his village. He began his business in 2006 after coming across the opportunity to buy 6 hectares of land and, since he had previously worked construction and knew the trade, decided to invest in a production business of his own. He used savings to obtain the proper machinery used to produce cement blocks and took counsel from others in learning how to produce high-quality cement blocks.

As his business began production, Victor struggled to buy the materials he needed, as most of his income was used to cover the cost of the property and machinery. When Victor heard about Invest Credit (IC) through friends who had attended a IC training, he decided to take out his first loan. He used this loan to invest in the materials he needed to help his business grow. As a result of the loan, Victor’s business began generating more revenue, giving him more capital to buy additional materials and machinery. With his business steadily growing, Victor decided to take out an additional loan the following year to strengthen his business operations.

Today, Victor’s business generates revenue of about $6000 per year, which helps to support his family of five and grow his church. He reports that the extra capital from the loan has had a positive impact on his business, and consequently on his life and his community. He is able to offer more to his children and provide jobs to others in his village. Currently, two men work full-time and others are hired on a week-by-week basis as needed. Victor values the opportunity to help others in his village add to their income through his business. Additionally, Victor donated his production services to provide all of the concrete blocks for the orphanage in his village. His business is well-known as being one that can be trusted; Victor is proud of his business’s reputation as a place where “you will be treated fairly and the quality is good.”

Through his experience working with IC, Victor says that he has learned a lot about being a business-owner. He has gained a better perspective of the value of money and is able to discern how to use his money efficiently and the importance of budgeting. Victor has also had the opportunity to attend several of IC’s trainings and has found them to be integral in his development as a business manager. At the trainings, he has learned practical information about advertising and sales, as well as how to run an ethical business. Months after the trainings, he is still applying the knowledge that he gained in his daily work. For example, Victor is currently focusing on different forms of advertising, as he is confident that despite the difficult economic situation there is a market for his products. Many of his customers express interest in building a garage or a barn with their extra money. Victor sees this as a great opportunity, and is thinking innovatively about how to make his business better known to the surrounding communities.

In the future, Victor hopes to expand his business to include production of windows and doors, as this would provide him with a more stable income. For start-up costs, he needs about $10,000 to buy the wood from Ukraine and is considering taking out an additional loan to enable him to do so. Victor also has access to many unused buildings on his property, and he hopes to be able to rent out these spaces to those in his community, enabling them to start businesses of their own.

Victor hopes to be able to use his business to serve others. He relayed that one of his employees has 5 children and lives in a 2 room house—he hopes that one day, when his profits grow, his business can provide free cement blocks for a bath and more rooms for his employee’s family.

Victor’s efforts toward a successful business have not come without hardship—especially in Moldova’s challenging economic environment. Being both a pastor and small-business owner, he often feels pulled between the two jobs. The struggles of the business take away from his ability to give more time and attention to his church. Dividing his time between the two endeavors is not easy, but Victor compromises by spending his mornings at the business delegating tasks to his employees, and in the afternoons visiting families from the church and the local prison. Most evenings, Victor is at church working on his sermon or attending meetings. He hopes to see his business grow so that he can invest more time in the church and his family.

Victor describes his faith as, “the thing that allows him to trust God for the future.” This trust motivates him to be intentional about using his business to impact the Kingdom of God. His two employees are both non-Christians, but through his contact with them at work Victor encourages them to get involved with church activities. His church has also been impacted, as the income from Victor’s business has enabled the church to host activities it otherwise would not have afforded. He hopes that his business will continue to have a positive spiritual impact. His church community is currently planting a new church in a neighboring village and he hopes to be able to use his blocks to help with the construction of the building.

"Your going where?" After some pondering, I realized this was really the most fitting name for my blog. After all, it was the most common response from people when I told them where I was headed. The map to the left will give you a better idea of where Moldova is located (highlighted in the countries colors of blue, yellow, and red). The history of Moldova is a complicated roller coaster, marked by a fickle sense of national identity that is only attainable through the rise and fall of contrasting political regimes. Today, the struggle continues as they push for prosperity in a relatively new era of independence.

Below is a brief account of the recent history of Moldova. If you would like to read more about the history of Moldova, please follow this link The History of Moldova. Or you can also check out the Moldova Wiki page by clicking here Wiki Moldova.

Recent History

Most of the territory of Moldova was before World War II the Romanian province of Bessarabia. It was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and combined with existing Soviet territory - an area on the left bank of the Nistru (Dniester) river, to which Stalin had given the status of autonomous region in 1924. The newly formed State was named the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR), one of fifteen Soviet republics.
Like all other Soviet republics, the MSSR was governed by the Communist Party leadership in Moscow, through local subordinate party and government structures. The economy was centrally planned, also from Moscow. Moscow decreed that the local language, originally Romanian (a Latin language), was written in Cyrillic script and renamed Moldavian. Russian was obligatory in schools, in administration and of course in dealings with Moscow. Political dissent, nationalist sentiment and any other manifestation of opposition to the one-party, were suppressed by the KGB.
As the political climate began to ease in the late 1980s under Gorbachev, nationalist stirrings began in Moldova as well as in other soviet republics. It became a strong trend by 1989, leading to a declaration of independence in August 1991.

First Post

Hello to all!

Well, I finally made it to Moldova. It was a long trip that took me through two other countries, Italy and Hungary, eventually touching down in the capital city of Chisinau. Stepping off the small prop plane, my feet were greeted by the uneasy feeling of cracked asphalt with a mixture of rocks and dirt filling in the holes. I followed the other passengers to the shuttle that would take me to the terminal. As we pulled in to the terminal that, to say the least, made Harrisburg airport look like JFK International, I thought to myself, “and so it begins”.

After a few minutes, I was picked up by, the man who would also be my boss for the next year, Ghena. He introduced himself and immediately began talking about the political situation in the country as we drove off. He was very welcoming and treated me like an old friend, good thing, because I would be staying with him for the next two weeks until I found an apartment of my own. Currently, I live on the top floor of his home, in a small, but comfortable studio apartment. I had a 3-day weekend to get adjusted to the time difference (+7hrs.) before I had to be at work on Monday. After sleeping until 2 o’clock in the afternoon for those 3 days, it was finally time for my first day of work.

I work for a microfinance institution named Invest Credit. In a nutshell, they provide loans to poor entrepreneurs who do not have any collateral, and therefore, no other means of getting the money to start a business. I am currently working on a project to get Invest Credit more funding from a variety of sources. So far the job is great, the people in the office have all embraced me and are doing their best to communicate. That has been the hardest thing thus far, the language barrier. At work it is not so bad, most of them are well educated, but when I go to the market it is a whole adventure in itself. I have gotten very good at pointing and shaking my head yes or no. Although I am currently studying Russian, it is a very tough language to learn and will undoubtedly take me a few months to get the hang of. All in all my first week has flown by and I am enjoying my time and the people. I have not had much chance to explore the city yet, but I plan on doing that in the upcoming weeks. Tomorrow morning, I am going on a 10 mile bike ride to a lake with some friends I have met at the local church. This will give me the opportunity to see some of the countryside…that is if I can even make it 10 miles.

Please feel free to email me at anytime, my email address is bkbkline@gmail.com. I want to say thank you to everyone who has given me support, whether financially or in thought and prayer.