“I’m Pavlina Petrasco, the President of the Consilium – Mayor of Butuceni village, Ribnitsa district. People have chosen me to change the village’s life to the better”. The deputy of the region, where Pavlina lives and works, wants to make many positive changes in their community, that’s why he advised Pavlina to participate in the project. Thus, they have left for a training in Tiraspol in September 2017, together with the mayor of Jura, the neighbouring village.

“We’ve only had ideas on cultural development”, Pavlina is recalling. “I wish to involve more people into the village’s development, to maintain the tradition, but we don’t really have the possibilities in this direction – no space, no adequate conditions. That’s why we’ve found a space we wanted to improve – to connect it to a gas heating system.”
In Butuceni village, you might find many things, but in a bad condition. “We’ve chosen the only sports building we have – with high walls, a very good roof and we’ve said to ourselves that in bad weather or during the cold winter evenings, our people could get together in this space. The summertime is full garden activities, so in winter, you also have to do something productive. For e.g., adults could pass onto younger generations their experience in weaving and embroidering and, maybe, singing the chastushki (a.n. – traditional singing poems). Plus, the younger ones could frequent mini-football, volley and tennis lessons.”
The project, coordinated by Pavlina, is enormously supported by the local community. “I represent the village’s administration and, together with the deputies, we make the decisions where to orient the present resources, where do we find new financial sources, who will carry on the project’s tasks, where do we call for volunteer help – after all, every one of us contributes with something”, Pavlina continues. Thus, with an initiative group of 50 people from various fields and with the villagers, Pavlina and her mayoralty team has started studying more about the village’s history. “For e.g., in a questionnaire, we’ve found out that by the ‘40s, the village’s birthday was celebrated on August 28th, but now, we’re doing it on November 4th.”

Pavlina wished the future project participants a very useful advise – never give up and always march forward to achieve their goals.

This series of articles is written in the framework of the Access to Success project, implemented by the consortium of organizations Solidarity Fund PL in Moldova, EcoContact, Ecospectr and Mostenitorii. The project Access to Success is financed by the European Union within the “Confidence-Building Measures” Programme and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, the programme for development cooperation – Polish Aid.