Unveiling Moldova's Youth-Powered Democracy Tech Revolution: Reflections from our Hackathon

Alliance of Democracies Foundation recently returned from Chisinau, Moldova, after our annual Democracy Tech Hackathon. The hackathon took place alongside the Moldova DemTech Conference, which we co-organized with our partners at the Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy - EECMD (EECMD), with support from the Embassy of the Netherlands in Moldova and the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung . For our Hackathon, we collaborated with Yep!Moldova and received support from the USAID IREX program. It was a great success for both the conference and the hackathon.

Compared to my first visit to Moldova last year, the atmosphere in Chisinau was somewhat calmer this time. I had shared my initial reflections on Moldova in a LinkedIn post. Speaking with residents and local expats, I could sense the impact of Russia's war in Ukraine, which still casts a shadow over their lives for nearly two years. As the conflict continues, the future remains uncertain for many Moldovans, especially the younger generation.

For the older generation, there is a growing nostalgia for the "good old days," especially in rural areas. Part of this sentiment has been fueled by Ilan Shor, a Moldovan-Israeli pro-Russian oligarch now living in exile in Israel. Shor was sanctioned by the EU in May for his involvement in actions aimed at destabilizing the country.

Regardless of the effectiveness of Shor's tactics, the upcoming elections in Moldova will be critical for the nation's uncertain future. It's clear from my visit that the promises of economic prosperity following Moldova's independence in 1991 have not materialized for the majority of Moldovans, leading many to seek better opportunities abroad. Almost every Moldovan knows someone who has moved abroad, and Russia's war in Ukraine has accelerated this trend.

To gauge the severity of the migration issue, I examined the net migration rate, which measures the difference between the number of people entering and leaving a country per 1,000 persons. The net migration index for Moldova was -0.344 per 1,000 population in 2021, a 0% increase from 2020. In 2022, it was -0.345 per 1,000 population, a 0.29% increase from 2021. By 2023, the rate had plummeted to -8.8 migrants per 1,000 population, making Moldova the European country with the highest net migration rate, a reality that has affected people I know personally. This large negative net migration trend is partly due to Ukrainian refugees from Moldova returning to their home country.

Young Moldovans are eager to address this and other issues affecting their home country. With this context in mind, we launched our Moldova Democracy Tech Hackathon with a panel discussion on "NextGen: The Role of Youth in Advancing Freedom and Democracy through Tech." Our panel featured speakers such as Viorica Cerbusca , the CEO of Artcor and Yep! Moldova, and Daniel ?erban , the Chief of Party for USAID's Moldova Comunitatea Mea. We also welcomed our Democracy Tech Alumnae Fellow, Raluca Gindea.

While reflecting on her experience in the Democracy Tech Entrepreneur Fellowship, Raluca Gindea said and I quote.

“This fellowship was one of my most amazing experiences. I loved the way it was structured and unwrapped step by step, week by week and month by month until it peaked with the Copenhagen Democracy Summit”.

Raluca was the youngest and only Moldovan speaker at this year's summit, where she presented her innovative tool, the People's Parliament. She joined the fellowship after her team won our inaugural Democracy Tech Hackathon in Moldova last year. Raluca is now pursuing her university education in France at Paris Cité, specializing in Literature and Social Sciences. She serves as a shining example of how Moldovan youth are taking a leading role.

As in the previous year, our hackathon this year primarily attracted young participants. The winning team, Marmoris, whose oldest member is turning 18 later this year, developed a Hybrid Voting System – a cutting-edge robot for validating ballots at a lower cost compared to existing solutions. We awarded them $1,000 to build their hardware prototype.

We are likely to see another young leader like Raluca at next year's Copenhagen Democracy Summit on May 14-15. This led me to ask Raluca what message she would have for the world if she weren't attending the summit to present the People's Parliament. Her response, unedited, serves as a powerful conclusion to this article:

"I would tell the world that there are so many people who suffer so much, for so long, such an unimaginable amount of pain. That the fact that we are here, with arms and legs, with hearts and brains, with freedom of speech and power in our hands, is a miracle that has such an important reason. There is a reason why we are on the other side, on the safe side, on the free side. It is not due to our luck. It is because we are the balance to the tremendous amount of suffering and human misery, to the tyranny and the injustice.

We are the solution to the problem. We are not free and safe to consume ourselves in a paradisiacal world. We are in a heavenly world with the purpose to save the one that is in hell, to gain power in our minds and bones so that we are able to empower the powerless, so that we can see and feel the suffering and still offer fully ourselves as help. It is our purpose and it is our duty to balance the evil, to never forget about its existence and to be willing to go to hell in order to take children and humans out of misery, out of there.

If we do not do it and only indulge while desperately trying not to feel any kind of pain, evil will prevail and evil will remain”.

A special thanks to Alliance of Democracies Executive Director, Jonas Parello-Plesner who embarked on this journey with me, to our partners at EECMD - Levan Tsutskiridze , to John Riordan, Daniel Serban, and to all the hackathon speakers and mentors that guided our participants, and some who also doubled as jury members, Viorica Cerbusca, Natalia Vozian, MBA, CMI, MSP, PRINCE2?, SAFE Agile , Dorina Ciobanu , Margarita Ursu , Andriy Zaikin , Igor Mironiuc , Sergiu Vition , ?? Valentine ?i?man . A special thanks to Presidential Advisor, Olga Rosca for providing an opening keynote to our hackathon and for joining our jury panel and the Deputy Prime Minister Nicu Popescu for inspiring our hackathon participants with a keynote at the Moldova Demtech Conference.