Within the Summer Academy “Leaders of the Future” 2016, organized by the Council of Women in Business in Bulgaria, the university students and school students participated in a work meeting with the director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for Bulgaria – Ms. Larisa Manastrili. During the meeting were presents the ideas and initiatives of the young participants in the project “Innovators of the Future”, part of the program “Staying in Bulgaria”, which for second consecutive year is organized by the Council under the patronage of the MEP Eva Paunova.

Ms. Manastrili presented the participants with the activity of EBRD, created in 1991 in order to assist the transition to market-oriented economy of countries from Central and Eastern Europe. The shareholders in it – 63 countries, the European Union and the European Investment Bank, support the building of the economies of 29 countries from Central Europe to Central Asia, being the biggest unilateral investor.

Larisa Manastrili acquainted the present people with interesting projects in Bulgaria, in which EBRD invested over 3 billion euro in different sectors of the country’s economy – corporative, financial, infrastructure, energetics and energy efficiency, as meanwhile has mobilized over 5,5 billion euro from other funding sources. Special interest was paid to the information about the youth internships and initiatives of EBRD, aiming for equality, development and realization assistance for the young people.

Ms. Manastrili presented her own career path and the professional challenges she had during her development. The shared experience amplified the role models who the participants met during their internship in the academy.