Radio România Internațional

Tag: Women Entrepreneurs

  • August 17, 2022

    August 17, 2022

    Measures. Leaders of the governing coalition in Romania are discussing new measures aimed at protecting the population and the economy against the big increases in electricity, fuel and natural gas prices. The measures envisaged include the reduction of the number of intermediaries between producers and consumers, and thus prevent prices from rising. The Social Democratic Party would also like a regulation of the energy market for domestic consumers and SMSEs, but the proposal has been rejected by the National Liberal Party. According to the Social Democratic leader Marcel Ciolacu, decisions regarding energy must be adopted by the Government by September 1st and applied for a longer period, until 2025.



    GDP. The Gross Domestic Product of the European Union and the Eurozone registered an increase of 0.6% in the second quarter of 2022, compared to the previous three months, according to preliminary data published on Wednesday by the European Statistics Office (Eurostat). In the first quarter of 2022, compared to the previous three months, the Gross Domestic Product registered an increase of 0.5% in the euro zone and 0.6% in the EU. Among the EU member states for which data are available, the most significant growth rates in the second quarter of 2022, compared to the previous three months, were recorded in the Netherlands (2.6%), Romania (2.1%) and Sweden (1.4%). Compared to the second quarter of last year, the GDP increased by 3.9% in the euro zone and by 4% in the European Union between April and June 2022, with all EU member states for which data are available reporting increases. Romania registered an annual growth of 5.3% in the second quarter of 2022, after an annual growth rate of 6.4% in the first three months. The National Institute of Statistics announced that Romanias economy grew by 2.1% in the second quarter of the year, compared to the previous quarter, while compared to the similar period in 2021, the growth was 5.3%.



    Entrepreneurship. The “Women Entrepreneur” program will be launched in Romania on Thursday, with the aim of encouraging and stimulating small and medium-sized enterprises founded and managed by women. According to the authorities, just over 35% of the Romanian entrepreneurs are women, and approximately 785 companies will benefit from this program this year. The maximum budget allocated to the program in 2022 is of about 31 million euros, each company being able to benefit from about 40 thousand euros. The “Women Entrepreneur” program also contributes to achieving one of the OECD standards – gender equality in the entrepreneurial field.



    Protest. Trade unionists from the Romanian police and penitentiaries are protesting, today, by picketing the Government headquarters, which will be followed by a march towards the offices of the Social Democratic and National Liberal parties, which are partners in the governing coalition. On Tuesday, the trade unionists picketed the headquarters of the Ministries of Interior and Labor. They announced that, on Thursday, the protests will continue at the headquarters of the European Commission Representation in Romania. The trade unionists are unhappy with salaries and the criteria used to award bonuses. They also demand the updating of the value of meal tickets according to the consumer price indices established by the National Institute of Statistics.



    Swimming. The Romanian swimmer David Popovici has qualified for the 400 m freestyle final of the European Championships in Rome. He raced in the first of five qualifying rounds. 38 swimmers participated in the rounds, and the first eight qualified for the finals. “It will be the strangest race for me, because I have no experience in this kind of event. Ive only done it three times, in small competitions. But its a good place to start and see if Im good or not”, said David Popovici before the race. At only 17 years old, David Popovici is, as of Saturday, the world record holder in the 100 m freestyle with 46 seconds and 86 hundredths. On Monday he also won the gold medal in the 200 m freestyle. A world champion in both the 100 and 200 m freestyle, the Romanian swimmer covered the four lengths of the pool in 1 minute 42 seconds and 97 hundredths, a new world and European record.



    Tennis. The Romanian tennis player Simona Halep, who has just won the WTA 1000 tournament in Toronto, has defeated the Russia Anastasia Potapova, 6-4, 6-3 and has qualified for the second round of the tournament tin Cincinnati, with 2.5 million dollars in prize money. In the next round Simona Halep will play against another representative of Russia, Veronika Kudermetova. Romanian player Sorana Cirstea has also qualified for the second round, after defeating the Swiss Belinda Bencic, the defending Olympic champion. Next she will take on the Czech Petra Kvitova. (MI)

  • Mother Entrepreneurs

    Mother Entrepreneurs

    Many
    women are mothers and they are grateful for that every day. More than anything
    else they want to be by their children’s side and of course to be self-reliant.
    Florentina Baloş is a project coordinator within the ‘Work at Home Moms Romania’
    Association (WAHM) and next she will tell us more about the community of mother
    entrepreneurs and their success stories. WAHM is a not-for-profit association
    whose purpose is to provide professional support to mothers.


    The idea of this association emerged out
    of necessity, of the need to accumulate information. And what better way to do
    that if not through networking sessions? These meetings take place every month,
    because we want to start together on this path of entrepreneurship, which we
    consider wonderful. We want to support mothers in their decision to work from
    home or to start a business.



    In most of the cases, the decision to work from home is made when the
    woman becomes pregnant. At that very moment they start asking questions about
    how it will be possible for them to spend more time with their kids or how to
    improve their relationship with the kids, the quality of the time spent
    together with the kids, because a rested and relaxed mother or a mother with a
    well-established schedule can pay more attention to her kid. At that moment, they
    decide to either work from home or to start a business. Irrespective of what
    they may choose, we are there to support them.


    We
    asked Florentina Baloş if there are many mothers joining the WAHM community:


    We organize these meetings ‘Mother entrepreneur connect networking’ all over
    the country. Our community is the largest one in the Bucharest-Ilfov area.
    Mothers have joined our community along the years and they have attended almost
    all the events we have held. In order to have quality meetings, we prefer to
    have about 30 participants. In certain months we had more requests for support,
    so we had to organize two or three such meetings. But generally we prefer
    meetings with 30 participants, for them to be interactive.


    Among
    the events organized by ‘Work at Home Moms Romania’ Association we can mention
    Christmas fairs, Easter fairs, or other fairs devoted to the celebration of spring
    or femininity. We asked Florentina Baloş about the professions of the mothers
    who join the association:


    They come from all walks of life:
    hand-made manufacturing, services, graphics, accounting, architecture. There
    are mothers who make crochet items, who want to preserve the traditional
    costume, therefore we organize many traditional gatherings that start from the
    Mum connect meetings.


    Next
    Florentina Baloş will enlarge upon the support offered by the association


    During our meetings we focus a lot on
    cooperation. We practically show them the efficiency of cooperation and urge
    them to cooperate. And we are happy to discover that many mothers have started
    to cooperate with others. We want to boost their confidence, because, in our
    opinion, the main obstacle in the way of success is the lack of confidence, of
    self-confidence.


    At the
    beginning of the year the ‘Mother entrepreneur connect networking’ meets to set
    out the plans for the future. Florentina Baloş is back at the microphone with
    details:


    As to our plans for the future, we want
    to carry on with these meetings, to take them to another level, in the sense of
    bringing experts as guests of the meetings who should talk, for at least an
    hour, about various issues such as entrepreneurship or parenting, because it is
    difficult enough to be a working-at-home-mother.