Interview with Cornelia Cincilei, Executive Director of Pas cu Pas, Moldovan Member of ISSA

ISSA was pleased to have the opportunity to talk with Cornelia Cincilei, Executive Director of Pas cu Pas, the NGO member of ISSA in Moldova.  Pas cu Pas was registered as a public association in 1998 to implement the Step by Step Program in Moldova.  It was one of the founding members of the International Step by Step Association. The organization’s mission is to promote educational reform by changing teacher training practices and by ensuring quality child-centered, democratic education in classrooms in a real partnership with family and community. ISSA talked with Ms. Cincilei about Pas cu Pas’s current activities and its significant involvement in Moldova’s World Bank-funded Education for All-Fast Track Initiative.

Back row: (left to right) Rita, Liliana and Olga Front row: Cornelia, Valentina

ISSA: Can you tell me a little about your team?

CC: Our core team consists, besides myself, of three program staff, an accountant and a technical assistant/driver. The responsibilities of the program staff are as follows:  Valentina Lungu is Master Teacher Trainer (MTT) and national certifier, Liliana Calmatui is in charge of the Community School (CS) project, and Olga Olevski coordinates the central and regional trainings, maintains our web-site, translates and adapts program materials, etc.; recently she took over the coordination of a new project centered on Community Centers for Children and Families.  The larger SbS team includes about 50 trainers for SbS pre-school, primary, transition, inclusion, Community school trainings, etc.

ISSA: What does a typical week in your organization look like?

CC: In general, it is hard to say what a “typical” week is.  A year-and-a-half ago, for example, we had “cascade” trainings for 105 regional trainers and 1,300 pre-school teachers across the country under the Education-for-All/Fast-Track-Initiative (EFA-FTI) project, a Catalytic Fund grant to the Government. It was an intense period since trainings had to take place within a limited period of time. So, everybody in the office was primarily involved with this project and the life in the office was probably reminiscent of the team of a candidate in a presidential campaign.

Within the last half-a-year, for example, we also worked hard on looking for new funding opportunities that would allow us to further promote our values, using the human and material resources that have been accumulated through these years. At the same time we have been involved in meetings of the MOE Consultative Board for EFA-FTI and the Consultative Board for the UNDP-Ministry of Public Administration project for community development, lobbying for a more flexible system of teacher continuous professional development. 

Valentina is usually splitting her work time between mentoring SbS teachers at our main training/model center in Chisinau, continuously working with the national trainers who deliver regional and on-site trainings, and with the mentors and certifiers, developing new materials. Liliana is monitoring the implementation of the local projects, communicating with the local CS coordinators and visiting the sites, organizing trainings for CSs. Olga is communicating with the regional educational authorities and with schools seeking professional development opportunities, arranging trainings, staying in touch with the SbS  network schools, etc. Rita, the accountant is very efficient in financial management and of great help in project budgeting. Except Liliana, who joined the team four years ago, the other team members have been here for ten years and more. Thus, we are used to cooperating and being flexible, which is very important under the circumstances.

ISSA: What are the main projects your organization is working on right now?

CC: One of our main projects right now is the Community School Project (supported by Charles S. Mott Foundation and OSF), implemented in 43 rural communities. We also continue delivering trainings for pre-school and primary teachers on child-centered education, trainings on school improvement, meaningful learning, qualitative assessment and evaluation, mentoring and certification, ToTs, etc., from small grants coming from the National Soros Foundation, ISSA, and from training and consultancy fees.  In February we launched a new project for Community Centers with Liechtenstein Foundation support.

ISSA: What challenges do you find your organization facing today?

CC: Although our trainings are much appreciated by the trainees, the declared right for the teachers to choose their in-service trainings providers is still not very well supported by financial mechanisms. For this reason, the country financial resources for us are very limited. On the other hand, the interest of the donor community for Moldova is quite low. A challenge for us is how to continue to offer our much valued trainings to Moldovan teachers under these tough circumstances.

ISSA: How are these different than the challenges you faced when your organization began working on SbS?

CC: At the beginning we needed, aside from the financial aid, a lot of methodological support to really bring a mental paradigm change to the people involved with the program in-country. This is why we highly appreciate all our trainers and consultants who helped us grow. We are continuously looking for professional growth opportunities outside the country to bring new things back home. But this is because now we have a cohort of experienced trainers who are also in constant need to move on.

ISSA: Over the past ten years, how has field of ECD changed in your country?  Have strengths in the system which existed 10 years ago been maintained?  Have weaknesses been improved? In what ways?

CC: After the promising first half of the ‘90s, with the education reform on the rise, with the deepening economic crisis of the second half of the ’90s, particularly with the political set-back of 2000, the progressive drive in the system came to a halt for some time. Many teachers have abandoned the field (and the country).

Some positive dynamics in ECD started with the support of the international community to Moldova, as the poorest country in Europe, in an attempt to help it reach the Millennium Development Goals. Thus, in 2007 started the Education For All-Fast Track Initiative (EFA-FTI) project supported by the Catalytic Fund which, upon the decision of the Government of Moldova, is entirely focused on the increased access to and quality of educational services for rural children and families. Our NGO warmly welcomed this decision and we were very glad to play an important part in the project. In the first phase of its implementation 15 Community Centers in villages without kindergartens and 33 resource centers in the raion (district) kindergartens for families and unreached children have been created.

We are very proud that our experts were closely involved with the development of the new materials under this project, contributing a lot of their Step by Step experience to the development of the new Teacher Standards, Teacher Guide, Big Book for shared reading, set of thematic posters and other illustrative materials. Our NGO was involved in the training of 105 regional trainers and further in the “cascade” trainings for 1,300 school teachers from the whole country based on the new documents promoting child-centered education. All this gives us hope that we will also be involved in the second phase of EFA-FTI.