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3 weeks ago | 
news.err.ee | Marian Manni |Marian Männi
"It was easy!" exclaimed 4th-graders Maria and Dragos right after their math test. It's not something you usually hear after a test, especially not from primary school students. "I was nervous at first," Maria admits. "But it was much easier than paper tests!" Her schoolmates nod in agreement. We are at the Theoretical High School "Aurel David" in Bardar, a small Moldovan village about half an hour's drive from the capital, Chisinau.
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2 months ago | 
emerging-europe.com | Marian Manni |Marian Männi
Extensive dental labs, better fertility treatment, and California-credited medical studies—Moldova is playing big in the health sector. Twelve years ago, a young Moldovan graduate, Vadim Vetrilă, was handing out flyers in Venice. “Come and fix your teeth in Moldova!” he would urge passers-by. “Moldova?” Italians asked him, puzzled. “What is that?”Before Vetrilă started studying dentistry, all his family left Moldova to work in Italy.
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Feb 22, 2025 | 
news.err.ee | Marian Manni |Marian Männi
Russia targets Ukraine with bullets, but Moldova is fighting them on another front, facing down weaponized misinformation. "We are at the frontline in the fight for freedom and democracy," says Dan Perciun, Moldova's 33-year-old Cambridge-educated minister of Education. He believes knowledge is the best defense against such misinformation, turning Moldova's classrooms into another theatre of war. Moldova's performance on the 2022 PISA test shows the urgent need for reform.
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Sep 7, 2024 | 
emerging-europe.com | Marian Manni |Marian Männi
From start-ups using animation to teach young people new languages to one of the world’s biggest anime brands, Moldova is home to an increasingly dynamic animation sector. This is not how you would imagine Moldova’s capital. We are standing on a rooftop in the middle of Chișinău, and the wind plays with our hair. Below us are the offices of Crunchyroll, the ultimate brand for all things anime with roots in the US, which chose Moldova as one of its 16 offices around the globe.
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Aug 31, 2024 | 
emerging-europe.com | Marian Manni |Marian Männi
We have two toddlers and live in Chișinău. In our free time, here’s what we do. When I pick up my three- and six-year-olds from their kindergarten, we usually head straight to the park. It’s nicer to process their after-school meltdown in the fresh air and me holding a takeaway almond latte. The park Valea Morilor is where my Moldovan man took me on our first walk to impress me. He didn’t think it through. It was February and depressing.
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Aug 30, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Tiina Kaukvere |Marian Manni |Marian Männi
It’s early summer in Moldova, and the cherries are already ripe. Fellow journalist Marian Männi and I pick and pop them into our mouths as we follow our chosen tour guide up a hill. We are exploring Old Orhei, a famous Moldovan landmark and archaeological site. It consists of three villages: Trebujeni to the north, Butuceni to the west and Morovaia to the east. The area is built on a green field, and the Răut River runs through it.
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Aug 2, 2024 | 
emerging-europe.com | Marian Manni |Marian Männi
Moving from Silicon Valley to a remote village in Moldova—and back to your parents’ place—can have its perks. The start-up world can be competitive. Entrepreneurs are searching for innovative and disruptive ideas to take over the world. But can you innovate and disrupt in a traditional, quiet place? Do you need to be in Silicon Valley or London to ‘make it’? We met two big dreamers in small towns to find out how they keep their minds sharp.
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Jul 14, 2024 | 
emerging-europe.com | Marian Manni |Marian Männi
In Moldova, a secretive and largely forgotten Soviet-era maker of electrical wires is now at the cutting edge of technology and innovation. One simple question connects some of the best neuroscientists in the world and an abandoned Soviet factory: How can we understand the brain better? We know very little about something so vital to us. Researchers have thus far taken most of their data from images or EEG (metal disks placed on the head).
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May 11, 2024 | 
emerging-europe.com | Marian Manni |Marian Männi
Moldovan Eurovision singer Pasha Parfeni was one of the few to stand up for freedom. It cost him everything. A local celebrity, Parfeni, was about to step onto the stage. But no one was ready for what he was planning to do. It was a late summer evening in August 2016. People gathered in the centre of Chișinău, Moldova’s capital, for a national concert. The army victoriously marched through the town. This European country was marking 25 years of independence from the Soviet Union.
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Apr 17, 2024 | 
balkaninsight.com | Marian Manni |Marian Männi
Thousands were packed into the Singapore venue and many more were watching from home when the presenter of the FIRST Global youth robotics competition turned to 17 year-old Vladimir Corduneanu and said, “You kinda showed me up there.” “I said there weren’t many great shooters but you just had an amazing machine shooting within the reservoir.” Corduneanu and his four teammates from Moldova had spent three months building a robot capable of picking up different-sized balls and shooting them...
