Ioana Clara Burghelea has five years of experience working on projects related to community development, women’s emancipation, and health and security issues. As an Area Technical Coordinator for the region of Southwest Oltenia at the Agrostar Federation, Burghelea is involved in providing useful information to the county’s rural communities on professional vocational courses available in agricultural and non-agricultural fields. She works with these communities to offer counselling regarding accessing European funding, drafting European projects for the rural beneficiaries, and implementing projects in the communities of Southwest Oltenia. As a CSP Fellow, Burghelea worked at Micro-enterprise Training and Assistance (META) in Boise, Idaho, where she developed evaluation methods for one-hour sessions for women, combined the practices of META with evaluation practices from Romania, helped develop a curriculum for a sustainability initiative, took part in developing a business plan for the social enterprise resource hub, helped develop a market analysis piece on seeking additional funding for Hispanic migrant farmers, and covered the market research part for the Boise International Market community space. Now returned to Romania, Burghelea is working on empowering and building capacity among rural women by helping them further their education and start their own businesses.

Email: clara_burghelea@yahoo.com