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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nNataliia Nikolenko\/Getty Images<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n THE FACTS OF MOLDOVA\u2019S ECONOMY<\/strong> leave little doubt that labor emigration is necessary\u2014or that its effects can hit poor families the hardest. The country is landlocked, which complicates its foreign trade. It lies outside the European Union (EU) but is seeking to join. The country has few high-value industries and instead engages mostly in light industry, mid-level services like tourism, and agriculture. According to a 2021 report from the EU\u2019s European Training Foundation, Moldova has one of the highest overall rates of migration outflows in the world. Most leavers go to Russia or Romania, and sometimes to Italy or Ukraine. As more adults leave, fewer children are born and raised in Moldova, making the grim cycle of depopulation a threat to the country\u2019s present and future, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a catastrophe for Moldovan families,\u201d says Sergey Rakhuba, president of Mission Eurasia, a Tennessee-based Christian aid group that runs School Without Walls locations in 14 countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moldova belonged to the Soviet Union until the bloc\u2019s collapse in 1991, leading to economic chaos and an urgent need to find stable work. Moldova has lost a third of its population since then. Many parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia\u2014the former Soviet empire\u2014remained economically depressed for decades. That fostered a set of practices that persist today: legal and illegal labor, with the kinds of exploitation that are typical in illicit work. A June report from the EU\u2019s Council of Europe found widespread abuses against Moldovan men working abroad. Women are prone to trafficking for willing\u2014and unwilling\u2014sex work, usually in European cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The attractiveness of jobs abroad has only increased as countries in Moldova\u2019s neighborhood have prospered. At the low point of its post-Soviet economic depression in 1999, Russia had a gross domestic product (GDP) of less than $200 billion. In 2024, it logged a GDP of $2.17 trillion\u2014despite a bevy of Western sanctions in response to its war on Ukraine. That same year, Poland achieved a GDP of $915 billion, while Romania\u2019s topped $383 billion. Poland, Romania, and Russia, like Moldova, share a Communist past, which made the trans\u00adition to capitalism painful. But Moldova\u2019s GDP last year came in at just $18.2 billion\u2014many times below its neighbors, according to World Bank data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With plentiful jobs elsewhere, even Moldovans who would prefer to stay must grapple with the push and pull of work opportunities abroad\u2014and economic bleakness at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn other conditions, parents could stay,\u201d says Denis Griciuc, who runs the school in Svetlii alongside his wife, Lyuba. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to leave, [but] they have to.\u201d Sixty percent of the students\u2019 parents work outside Svetlii, Griciuc tells me. The Griciuc family includes six children, three of whom Denis and Lyuba adopted from troubled homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For many Moldovans, challenges in work pair with equally serious social problems. More than 30% of the population lives below the national poverty line, per data from the World Bank published in April 2025. Alcoholism and rural poverty are especially acute. The same report held that two relatively recent shocks\u2014COVID-19 and the war in neighboring Ukraine\u2014have warped job markets, stalled homebound cash transfers, and sent inflation soaring to almost 35% per year. War-related disruptions to Ukraine and regional energy systems have sparked a heating shortage. Three in 10 Moldovans now say they cannot heat their homes adequately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Apart from Moldovans\u2019 private lives and homes, the \u00adcountry\u2019s other problems play out at very public \u00adlevels. Corruption is a \u00adsignificant concern: The country ranks 76 out of 180 on the main index of Transparency International, a governance watchdog. While scores have improved in recent years under the pro-\u00adWestern presidency of Maia Sandu, Moldovan corruption often goes unpunished. The country\u2019s most famous case of public graft involves a former politician, Ilan Shor, who was \u00adconvicted in absentia for a 2014 embezzlement totaling almost $1 billion. Media reports dubbed Shor\u2019s maneuver the \u201ctheft of the century\u201d\u2014the stolen sum totaled about 12% of Moldova\u2019s GDP at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shor, a dual citizen of Moldova and Israel, remains beyond Moldova\u2019s borders and the reach of justice\u2014for now. And despite improvements, Moldova\u2019s post-Soviet vestiges, like\u00a0corruption, have discouraged the kind of job-creating foreign investment that has benefited its neighbors.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n 11-year-old Kseniya Russu wants to become an accountant.Dima Rakhuba \/ Mission Eurasia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n AGAINST SUCH FORMIDABLE CHALLENGES,<\/strong> the School Without Walls is doing what it can. Beyond basic schooling, its ministries include vocational training. Some students, mostly girls, study floristry. Boys can hone skills in construction. Others learn to make bread and manage the local school-run bakery across the street from the school grounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After visiting the classroom and eating a meal with school staff, we make a stop at the training bakery. A Moldovan welcoming committee greets us, wearing traditional embroidered tunics and long skirts. Young women hold out bread and salt, Eastern Europe\u2019s customary greeting for guests. They encourage us to take a hunk of bread, dip it in the salt dish, taste it\u2014and feel fully welcomed, in the Moldovan way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the crowd mills in and outside the bakery\u2019s interior, a cluster of senior women\u2014all in the brightly colored headscarves common in Moldovan villages like this one\u2014sits outside, waiting for the free bread the bakery provides as part of its mission. Speaking in Russian, Gagauzia\u2019s most common language, they share stories of poverty, trials, and separation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I ask the group if they have family members working abroad, nearly all of them raise their hands. They rattle off the countries of their loved ones\u2019 employment: Germany, Italy, Romania, Russia, the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How does their absence make you feel? I ask one woman, whose few remaining teeth, all gold, glint in the sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt hurts my heart,\u201d she says, and looks away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As evening sets in, the air in Svetlii changes from cool to chilly. The pale light dims over the surrounding farms and hills\u2014striking a contrast between the beauty of the countryside and the ugly realities of life here. The scarved grandmothers, bread under their arms, shuffle home to feed their grandchildren and themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I ask Griciuc what gives him hope for his six children and the many others in his care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n