Almost 50 km from Chisinau, in Chircăiestii Noi, the whole community is animated due to a new entrepreneurial venture - Social Textil  - a social enterprise founded by Iulia Culicenco - a young mother who decided to use her studies and experience in textile industry to develop a tailoring workshop in her native village, close to parents, kind people and picturesque nature.

Iulia received support from  the European Union, within the EU4Youth Social Innovation project - a strategic partnership! project, which offered young people from Moldova and Ukraine opportunities for training, financing and mentoring in social entrepreneurship. The value of the grant that allowed her to establish the social enterprise was €7.500.

Social Textil is the only tailoring workshop in the area and one of the few economic ventures in the village.

Here, the social entrepreneur also developed a production line of comfortable everyday knitwear at affordable prices. Also, for the first time, after many years, villagers have access to clothing repair services and custom-made clothes. 

Social Textil is an authorized social enterprise, and it reinvests 90% of the profit in the social mission - free training in tailoring for women from rural areas and at-risk groups, creating jobs for these people.

"Obtaining the status of a social enterprise for me is the way to achieve social goals and the possibility to solve the problem of unemployment among disadvantaged people from the rural environment and those with disabilities. The social enterprise status will allow me to train disadvantaged people in my community in tailoring, create new jobs for people in difficulty as well as offer clothing repair services with the aim of re-introducing it into circulation and thus preventing environmental pollution by throwing it in the landfill." - Iulia Culicenco, EU4Youth social entrepreneur

Through this courageous initiative, social entrepreneur Iulia Culicenco inspires young women in the community to dream of a better future!

To contact the social enterprises for offers and details, please visit Social Textil Facebook page.