The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has created a need for both national governments and international financial institutions around the world to respond at considerable cost. In this context The Republic of Moldova has made the call for humanitarian aid and requested IFI funding to overcome the effects of the multi-dimensional COVID19 crisis. Several of them have answered to Moldovan call and have allocated or initiated agreements for financial assistance packages.

From one side, financial aid is a subject of great interest for the public, from another, the government does not pay attention to transparency and oversight. Along with the media, the CSO does not have the necessary expertise and experience to monitor how the funding is spent effectively. Thus, the fundamental problems the project will address is to help the investigative journalists to effectively monitor and investigate the way the financial assistance is paid and inform the public in a simple, accessible way about the meaning, purpose of the financial aid received by the Republic of Moldova.

The main activities of the project include:

• Gathering information by experts on all IFI assistance received by Moldova. Elaboration of analytical notes on IFI financial assistance underlying the transparency gaps, legal, institutional obstacles, the potential corruption and embezzlement areas;

• Organize online workshops with CSOs, journalists, influencers or activists on the use of the IFI pandemic related assistance. Select a group of investigative journalists, among the people trained in the workshops, or (new) media outlet to elaborate journalistic investigation on the gaps identified in the use of the IFI pandemic related financial assistance;

• Organizing online presentation with the presence of the representatives of the state institutions, CSOs active in the field of the transparency in order to share the outcomes and outputs of the project and elaborate social media content for presenting the problems in using the IFI pandemic related assistance.

This project is carried out within a regional Consortium consisting of five countries: Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The project “Enhancing Moldovan civil society effort in monitoring the IFI crisis COVID-19 related funding” is implemented with the kind support of the Soros Foundation Moldova.