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Romania -- The IFAD-financed Apuseni Development Project helps strengthen the economy of Romania’s rural mountain communities by promoting on- and off-farm enterprises and providing rural development services. The Apuseni revolving credit fund offers investment and working loans to people who qualify for them.

Sibiu, a medieval city in Romania’s Transylvanian heartland, has everything a tourist dreaming of ‘olde’ Europe would want: enchanting courtyards, meandering cobbled streets and expansive plazas. Its beauties are such that the city has been invited by Luxembourg, with which Sibiu has many strong ties, to share the title of European Capital of Culture for 2007.

When Turkey’s Ulker Group wanted to expand into south-east Europe, Romania was clearly the place to be. The Anatolian food giant’s new plant in Romania, which is soon to join the European Union, will support its strategy of gaining easier access to new markets. It’s also providing jobs for hundreds of people living south of Bucharest.

Tuberculosis has killed more people than any other disease in history mainly because it spreads easily: A patient can infect over 15 others merely by coughing. In Romania, a country with ten times more new TB infections than the European Union average, over 27,000 members of the Roma community have been informed on ways to prevent TB, recognize its symptoms, and know where to receive free treatment.

Irgiz Ibrahim, 26, lives with her mother and her three children in an overcrowded, run-down house here.

In Transylvania in central Romania a cheerful woman with a pink headscarf stands outside her house behind a trestle table. On it she has old-fashioned scales, a couple of plastic baskets of pears and a small crate of apples.

In Romania, where polluted rivers are threatening human health and the natural environment, Canadian expertise is changing the course of damaging hydroelectric policies.

Romania, once known as the breadbasket of Europe, is now a net importer of agricultural goods - only 12% of the country’s gross domestic product comes from agriculture.