Chirtoaca may have learned lessons from an earlier campaign, which he lost. But Alexandr Snaidruc, a computer student at Moldova State University and high-tech worker, says Chirtoaca won, at least in part, because he energized an army of young volunteers, many of them -- like Snaidruc -- alumni of cultural exchange programs with the United States.
Snaidruc, visiting Washington July 26, said he himself had campaigned for Chirtoaca, a liberal who ran against the candidate of the governing Communist Party. “Everybody was trying to help [Chirtoaca], giving whatever we had,” Snaidruc said of a group of exchange program alumni who joined the campaign. The young campaign workers were paid with pizza.

But clearly, their experiences do not end there; many of them maintain formal networks into adult life. Chisinau’s new mayor, for instance, is an alumnus of an exchange program to the United States and has headed an exchange alumni group in Chisinau for two years. The group’s members, including Snaidruc and other professionals and students, trust him. “He got our votes, and he got our help with the campaign. I think it will have a positive impact on our country,” Snaidruc said.
Snaidruc was one of a dozen graduate students and business owners from former Soviet Union countries who, having spent a year as teens studying at American high schools, came back to spend the summer of 2007 in a professional development program sponsored by the State Department and private-sector partners Lehigh University and the Iacocca Institute.
http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-engl ... 70612.html