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IATP News from Western Eurasia

March 4-17, 2005

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MOLDOVA

Anatol Gremalschi of the Institute
for Public Policy delivers a
presentation on the strategy of
building an Information Society in
Moldova

IATP Partners with Ministry of Education in Conducting Training of Trainers Courses for Educators throughout Moldova
On March 14-16, IATP access sites in Cahul, Chisinau, and Ungheni, Moldova, hosted 27 high school teachers from 18 districts for an intensive 17-hour course on implementing information and communication technologies in secondary education. Iurie Mocanu, chief of the Forecasting, Information and Documentation Department of the Moldovan Ministry of Education, applauded IATP’s efforts to conduct trainings at access sites to integrate information and communication technologies in secondary education. The presidential initiative aims to equip schools with computers, to enable Internet connectivity, to design and implement an information system for managing education processes, and to create a countrywide education portal. As part of the IATP designed course, IATP staff trained participants to install and configure workstations and local area networks and to connect the computers to the Internet. Participants also learned how to configure Internet networks and to set up and use e-mail in their work. To protect confidential information on computers, IATP staff introduced the teachers to firewall software and discussed proper methods of backing up and safeguarding documents. In addition, the teachers practiced running virus checks on computers and documents as well as updating virus definition databases. The former minister of education, Anatol Gremalschi, currently program coordinator at the Institute for Public Policy (IPP), visited the IATP access site in Chisinau on the final day of the course. Situated in Chisinau, IPP works to build improved political, business, academic, and media leadership and to contribute to the policy making process through the critical analysis of public policy issues confronting society. Gremalschi gave a presentation on strategies for building an information society in Moldova and focused on the numerous advantages of bringing information technologies into the educational process, including the development of educational software for various school subjects and the improvement of the flow of information between the Ministry of Education and its numerous district branches. At the end of the course, participants were given a test on the material covered and will receive IATP certificates signed by Moldova’s Vice Minister of Education, Viorelia Moldovan-Batrinac (CC 02). By the end of March, another 37 trainees from 17 districts of Moldova will attend similar courses at IATP access sites in Balti, Causeni, Comrat, Orhei, and Soroca. The trainees will share their newly acquired knowledge with fellow colleagues at the local level. Thus, approximately 2,000 computer science teachers throughout Moldova will benefit from the IATP Training of Trainers course. For the first time, an IATP training course received the endorsement of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Moldova.

Alumni Analyze Issues Surrounding Parliamentary Elections in Countrywide Online Discussion in Moldova
On March 10, over 60 Moldovan citizens, including alumni of US government-sponsored programs, journalists, educators, students, social activists, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) representatives gathered at eight IATP access sites across the country for an online retrospective analysis of the parliamentary elections that took place on March 6. Chat participants examined what went well and what did not during the electoral campaign and the actual day of voting. Igor Botan (CI 00), director of the Adept Association for Participatory Democracy, Angela Sirbu (IV 98), director of the Independent Journalism Center, and Paul Strutzescu, president of the League for the Defense of Human Rights, served as experts in the chat. Sirbu started her presentation by criticizing the public media and Moldova1 TV Channel, in particular, “for favoring the governing party with predominantly positive coverage which left very little room for criticism, while defaming the opposition with large amounts of negative content, thus causing considerable harm to its reputation.” Under Moldova's constitution, the parliament elects the head of state with a three-fifths majority of the 101-seat membership. They also approve the president's nomination of a prime minister and the composition of the cabinet with a simple parliamentary majority. The outcome of the elections, verified by election observers in parallel vote-counting, show the Communist Party with 56 parliamentary seats, the Moldova Democrata Electoral Bloc with 34 seats, and the Christian Democratic People's Party with 11 seats. The parliamentary supporters of Communist President Vladimir Voronin need 61 votes to re-elect the president and 51 votes to approve a new cabinet of ministers. Thus, Communists can now form the cabinet single-handedly, but to secure the president's re-election they need to make tactical deals with at least five members of the other two parties. If the new parliament fails to elect a president in two attempts, new parliamentary elections could be held. Botan, however, stressed the unlikelihood of this event and noted that “the massive opposition street protests we had previously witnessed in Georgia and Ukraine will probably not have a similar result in Moldova as the majority would treat them as political shows, which may, in the end, only favor the governing party [which stays out of them].” The IATP online discussion revealed several electoral deficiencies and also offered insight as to what is to be expected of the newly elected members of Parliament. The IATP chat continued the online coverage of the parliamentary elections with a post-elections analysis and empowered participants to communicate freely and exchange their views on the current political situation.

IATP Chess Team
member Elena
Cicariova won the
bronze medal at the
Individual Women’s
Chess
Championship of
Moldova

IATP Chess Team Member Wins National Medals in Chisinau, Moldova
February and March brought success to IATP chess team member Elena Cicariova, a mathematics and computer science major at Moldova State University in Chisinau. Cicariova is a member of the IATP chess team, which was created in May 2003 and currently consists of seven internationally-rated Moldovan chess players. Cicariova spent long hours training at the IATP access site by analyzing games played at various prestigious chess tournaments around the world by accessing their detailed coverage on www.chessbase.com. Following this, she achieved two of the most notable results in her chess career. In February she won the bronze medal at the Individual Women’s Chess Championship. Twelve of Moldova’s highest-rated female chess players participated in the round robin competition. By winning bronze, Cicariova qualified for the European Individual Women’s Chess Championship with a prize fund of over $40,000, which will take place in June in Chisinau. In early March, Cicariova had yet another reason to celebrate when she helped her university chess team finish second among teams from other colleges throughout in Moldova. Cicariova considers chess to be an integral part of her education, training her in concentration, self-control, patience, imagination, creativity, and logical thinking. She serves as a role model for young women interested in the traditionally male-dominated fields of mathematics, computer science, and chess by writing articles about her accomplishments for the website of her alma mater, Dimitrie Cantemir High School, hosted by IATP. Cicariova is one of the more than 250 Moldovans who benefit from IATP training courses every month at the network’s eight access sites in Moldova.

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UKRAINE

Young people discuss development
of city Web portals for youth in
Slavutych, Ukraine

Youth of Chernobyl Area Learn Website Development in Slavutych, Ukraine
On March 4 and 5, the IATP Web content development manager conducted a seminar entitled, “Theory and Practice of Modern Web Project Development” in Slavutych, for 15 members of the Youth Democracy Development Center at the City Center of Information Technology. Slavutych is small town near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that has been grappling with high levels of unemployment and drug addiction since a large proportion of local workers left the city in the aftermath of the meltdown of the power plant in 1986. The young people enrolled in the seminar with the ultimate goal of creating websites devoted to solutions to local social problems. The audience learned how to optimize websites for search engines, how to create a user-friendly design, and how to use a common computer language PHP, and other tools to create dynamic Web pages. Among the new websites was one authored by Mykola Konovalenko, containing information about his hobbies and the local youth social scene. Participants also formed a working group to develop three new websites devoted to social problems and their solutions. The students are continuing to develop their skills in an IATP-hosted distance learning course on Web programming taught by Ivan Vanyushkin, a college student based in Sevastopol. As a result of the training, participants created 15 personal Web pages and posted them to the IATP server. This brought the total number of resources hosted by IATP in Ukraine to 2,132.

IATP Users Give Recommendations to Eurovision Participants
On March 16, 20 IATP access sites throughout Ukraine hosted more than 80 musicians, journalists, and other IATP users, including some from Uzbekistan, to give recommendations to Greendjolly, a rap band, which will represent Ukraine at Eurovision. Eurovision is an annual contest for young singers from all over Europe. In 2005, the contest will take place in Kyiv, Ukraine, as Ukrainian singer Ruslana won the contest last year. Greendjolly (“wooden sledge” in the Hutsul dialect of Ukrainian), consists of three musicians - Roman Kalyn, Roman Kostyuk, and Andriy Pisetsky - became very popular in Ukraine during the “Orange Revolution.” Their song, Razom Nas Bagato, became a rallying anthem for Ukrainians protesting against presidential election violations. As a result of a country-wide phone-in vote, Greendjolly won the right to represent Ukraine at the Eurovision national selection contest. The band visited IATP’s administrative office in Kyiv to chat online with people wishing to comment and advise band members on their future Eurovision performance. The online chat began with questions on different arrangements for their song and the band’s plans following the Eurovision competition. During the second half of the discussion, participants gave advice on how to improve their performance for their Eurovision debut. In particular, Denys Nosov, a student from Lviv, suggested the band incorporate aspects of Ukrainian folk music and traditional clothes. Greendjolly received a complete log of the chat for future reference as they continue work to improve their song and overall performance. This online chat provided a unique forum for the lively exchange of ideas and thoughts in the cultural sphere and demonstrated one of the many ways information technology can facilitate dialogue on a wide range of issues.