MegaTrends 2050

 

On Thursday and Friday I assisted at the “MegaTrends 2050” interdisciplinary conference organized by the Luxembourg Parliament (Chambre des Députés Grand-Duché de Luxembourg) and the Fonds National de la Recherche, Luxembourg (FNR).

Two intensive days aimed at bringing together politicians, researchers and the general public to  reflect together on the major global trends that are affecting everyone of us.

How to use scientific foresight in politics is certainly a topic that interests me very much. Not only as politician, but also as entrepreneur, and also as researcher, since I’m in my 3rd year of my PhD studies. 

CSV was well represented by colleagues MEP Isabel Wiseler, MP Paul Galles, Fernand Boden, president of CSV Senioren, Marcel Oberweis; we’ve had very interesting conversations with the speakers and some of the researchers who were present. 

It was lovely to meet and listen to Philip Crowther’s keynote address which highlighted the challenges of investigative journalism because of the growing possibilities of spreading fake news in all forms.

It was reassuring to find out that 75% of Luxembourg’s population trusts science 💡 

The last words of this 2-day conference were given to the Youth Parliament and it was nice to meet again Gills Mathieson, the very proud mother of Franklin, the Secretary General of the #youthparliament. 

#foresightinpolitics 

#politikfirlëtzebuerg #politicsforluxembourg

#politikfirjiddereen #politicsforall

#letsdemystifyPolitics 

CSV & CSJ Stad CSV International

3 things I loved about Sacred Heart University Alumni gathering and 1 that I disliked...

Last Friday, on the 1st of July, took place a reunion of Sacred Heart University Alumni, on a beautiful Navitour boat in Remich. 

It’s been almost 20 years since I graduated from Jack Welch College of Business. I started my MBA in 2001 and took my time to get a double concentration, in both Marketing and International business, graduating in 2003. We all know how expensive an MBA is. In my case though, this privilege of being able to do an MBA and even to take more classes that I needed for graduation is explained by the fact that the university offered me throughout my studies a working contract as academic assistant. My remuneration was in nature: my rent and my classes. 

A couple of years after graduation, in 2005, I was elected president of the alumni association, then re-elected for a second term, which lasted until 2010, when I didn't present myself for a 3rd term. However, in 2011, because the alumni association was no longer active, the university's leadership team asked me to serve once again as president. I can therefore say very proudly that I am the longest serving president of the alumni association with 3 non-consecutive terms. 

As the longest serving president of the alumni association, I was extremely happy to hear last year about the initiative taken by a group of students and recent graduates to animate the alumni network, organize gatherings and take initiatives to give visibility to alumni. Yesterday’s boat party was part of this strategy and I was happy to support it and participate in it. 

I listed below 3 things I loved about the Alumni boat party and 1 thing that I disliked.

Let’s start with the positive:

#1 Fantastic location

 

#2 Because of the pandemic, the 2020, 2021 and 2022 graduates didn’t get a proper graduation ceremony. This was a great way to honor them and publicly recognize their achievement, together with family and friends. Congratulations everyone for this amazing achievement!

#3 The organization of the event was great: good food, open bar until 3 am, nice music, both live and with a DJ, nice show to introduce the deserts, all in all: great ambiance! I particularly appreciated the organization of a bus shuttle from and back to Luxembourg-city. This allowed the guests to have a drink or two without worrying about driving back. 

There was one thing that I strongly disliked on Friday: during the entire evening, all speakers used “SHULU” abbreviation and not once has the full name "Sacred Heart University Alumni Association" been mentioned. In addition, and this really upset me me, one speaker told us that if we didn’t know where the name “SHULU” was coming from, we were in luck that night to find out that: and I quote <<the “LU” part of “SHULU” comes actually from French. More particularly from “Loulou” which is a name French use with someone they love.>> ... As someone who served 3 times as president of the Sacred Heart University Alumni Association, I was very surprised to hear such a thing.... In the past, the alumni association was referred in writing as SHULA, which is quite obvious where it comes from... 

Coming back to the alumni, my congratulations once again to the recent graduates! 

Congratulations as well to the informal Alumni Committee who organized the event. I trust that this informal alumni group will, under the leadership of my friend, Sahil GOEL, become an asbl, like it  used to be when I served as president. I passed on to his Committee all the archives my committee and I kept since our 3 terms serving the alumni. 

Knowing Sahil, I trust that he will continue to keep the standards high. And, despite the saddness of the LUxembourg campus being shut down this month, I hope that he will document the activities of the alumni association, since this year we should celebrate 30 years since the university started to offer the programme in Luxembourg... 

N.B. A little bonus for those of you who got to read until here: the history and the bright past of the alumni association in Luxembourg needs to be kept alive, so that one can better envision the future of the Sacred Heart University Alumni Association. 

SHUL Graduation Dinner, 24th June 2005

Summary of the activities organized 

during the 1st term as SHULA President by Clara Moraru

                                 The 2007 Board: Pierre Arens, Georges Muller, Clara Moraru, 

                                       Christian Denizon, Jos Giannandrea (from left to right)

The 2012 Executive Comittee of the Alumni Association: 

Pierre Arens, Clara Moraru, David Brucklacker

(from left to right)

Fall Alumni Reunion, 

with guest speaker Vinciance Istace, 24th November 2006

  Fall SHUL Alumni Reunion, 

with guest speaker Pascal Koster, November 2007

SHUL Alumni Reception at the US Embassy, 

with guest speaker Edmond Israel, June 2007

Spring SHULA Reunion, 

with guest speaker Michal Wittmann, 29th February 2008 on the topic MBA & Politics

Press release, 2008

Press release, 2011

SHUL Graduation Dinner, 17th June 2011, at Parc Belair Hotel

Clara Moraru, Hedda Pahlson-Moller, Tatiana Majerus, 

18th June 2011

Spring Alumni Reunion, 

with guest speaker Georges Muler, 14 March 2012

    SHUL 25th year celebrations at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, 

15th June 2017

Visit Luxembourg's Parliament in English #letsDemystifyPolitics

In Luxembourg-city alone there are more than 70% of non Luxembourgers, in addition to those -like me- the “new Luxembourgers”, who came to Luxembourg as adults, and eventually decided to call it home.

You might know me as the only expat who managed to get into the leadership of a political party in Luxembourg... any party in politics… so you might know that I've been organizing since 2017 visits of the Parliament (la Chambre des Députés) to help demystify politics and encourage expats to get involved in politics in Luxembourg. Because politics concerns us all! 

FYI, since 2021 I am deputy Secretary General of the biggest political party in Luxembourg, CSV, the only expat so far to have reached a leadership position in a (any!) political party in Luxembourg.

As part of your integration process, would you like to visit Luxembourg’s Parliament, discover more about our new country’s institutions and discuss directly with an MP?

I’m organizing such visits for English speakers on a regular basis, with different politicians. You don’t need to be member of any political party to sign up for a private tour of the parliament and you can ask the MP who’s going to be our special guide any questions you might have.

The visit is free of charge and followed by a Luxembourgish dinner, for those interested, and everyone pays for her/his own food & drinks.

Kindly note that if you’re interested to join one of the private tours, you can sign up at latest 3 days before (provided that there are still places available) by e-mailing me your full name, as written in your ID, at the email address clara.moraru@languages.lu.

Children 9+ are welcome.

The upcoming dates - I will regularly update the dates when one tour is fully booked

Thursday, 12th of May 2022 at 6.30 pm 

Friday, 13th of May 2022 at 6.30 pm - fully booked

Friday, 17th of June 2022 at 6.30 pm

Below you can find some pictures from the previous tours of the Parliament

#politicsforall

#letsDemystifyPolitics

Pictures from the private tour which took place on the 21st of April 2022

                        Pictures from the private tour which took place on the 20th of April 2022

Pictures from the private tour which took place on the 19th of April 2022

Politics for all in Luxembourg

 

Politics didn’t interest me until 2014/2015, when I took a political stand for the very first time to support Klaus Iohannis, Sibiu’s mayor at that time and who was a candidate to Romania’s presidency. He became president of Romania and I became president of his political party in Luxembourg.

Later Erna Hennicot Schoepges invited me to join CSV. I was surprised at first to find out that CSV has, since 2008, an organization dedicated to the international community: CSI (CSV International). Little did I know that I would become president of that organization in December 2018. 

In 2021 I didn’t present myself for a second term and supported a team of young and dynamic people to take the leadership instead, which is now lead by Saad Nabbi. 

Christophe Hansen (SG) and Claude Wiseler (President of the party) convinced me to join their new team as deputy SG, and I’m happy that I accepted.

Today I spent the morning with my colleagues from CSV Bezierk Zentrum, lead since recently by Vincent Reding, mayor of Weiler-la-Tour. It was a very enjoyable morning and I felt a lot of enthusiasm and motivation to work together and help our communities with the immense expertise we have in the local administration through the CSV mayors and local councilors.

As deputy SG of the party, my personal responsibility is to help CSV further develop our organization dedicated to the international community, which has already more than 700 members. This way our party reflects better the composition of our country’s population, with all the different backgrounds, nationalities and languages. 

Together with my colleagues from the different local sections and different organizations, we will continue to help demystify politics and enable more new and non Luxembourgers to get involved in politics. I trust that the best is yet to come!

#politicsforall #csvthepartyofintegration

#demystifypolitics

Happy International Women's Day 2022!

Today is the 8th of March: the International Women's Day.

The social networks are filled with messages about women, some more inspiring that the others. I enjoyed reading the supporting messages posted by both women and men. This made me reflect on the first events in Luxembourg celebrating the international women's day that I could remember of ...

I grew up in Romania. There, the international women's day used to be a very happy celebration day, with men and women alike offering each other flowers or other small attentions, e.g. chocolate, cake etc. It was during the communism but even after the 1989 revolution, we still continued to celebrate women, without any debate about women's rights.  

After I moved to Luxembourg, I noticed that celebrating the international women's day was not part of the local culture. This is why in 2007, my company, Languages.lu, partnered with BGL (at that time Fortis) and organized together one of the first celebrations of the International Women's Day in their offices located in Luxembourg-city (Monterey).  It was a beautiful concert followed by a reception. You can find below some pictures from my personal archive.

 

 

   

2007 was also the year when I founded the Femmes Leaders du Luxembourg" association (FLL), in October. The following year, as chairwoman, I proposed to organize the International Women's Day in the framework of FLL, as a breakfast meeting on the theme "Women's Leadership", under the patronage and with the participation of Marie-Josée Jacobs, Minister for Equal Opportunities, Family and Integration. You can find below a few pictures from the seminar organized on the Occasion of the International Women's Day in 2008 at Le Royal hotel. Next to Minister Jacobs and to me, you might see some familiar faces who were invited as guests in our debate on women’s leadership: Colette Flesch, Corinne Cahen, Edmond Israel, Josée Friederes… It was a very interesting exchange because of the diversity of the profiles invited: some from education, some from finance and business, and also entrepreneurs, ambassadors and public officials.

 

Since 2008 to today, there are almost 15 years which passed. It saddens me that we still need to continue to discuss about women’s leadership and the inequalities between women and men which exist in almost all fields of activity and at most of the levels of the hierarchy, maybe with the exception with the interns or the entry level positions.

Whilst I appreciate that more and more companies and organizations talk about diversity and inclusion, it’s clear that not enough changes happened, and today we still cannot guarantee a better balance between the rights and opportunities offered to women compared to men. In this context, focusing the International Women’s Day on women’s rights seems the right thing, even if we might be treated by some (both men and women) as feminists, provocative or too demanding.

This is why this year I have chosen to mark the day with the publication of an educational game entitled “Wie sinn ech - Inspiring Wo-Men”, which is dedicated to 55 inspiring women, 25 from Luxembourg and 30 from the rest of world. 

To give you some taste of it, below is featured one of the most inspiring women from Luxembourg and the cards in EN, LU and FR which are dedicated to her. I will not spoil your pleasure of discovering her impressive and inspiring journey. 

I wish that learning about these women role models, honouring and celebrating them could inspire more girls and women into believing that anything is possible, if they put their mind to it. Thanks to them, women can go to university without dressing up as a man, can get a PhD, can become scientists, lawyers or entrepreneurs, can do public speeches and talk freely against war and against being controlled. But this is unfortunately still not true for all women. We need to continue to demand gender equality. Quotas could definitely help achieve that much quicker, we saw it already being successfully implemented in other countries. Why not also in Luxembourg, where there are currently only 24% of women in the local councils and where 88% of mayors are men? Definitely still a lot of work to be done.  

Happy international women’s day! 

Clara Moraru,

Founder of Luxembourg’s main women organizations: Fédération des Femmes Cheffes d’Entreprises de Luxembourg (FFCEL), Inspiring Wo-Men, Femmes Leaders du Luxembourg