Soros Foundation Moldova and the Cultural Policy Center launched a project to train the personnel of houses of culture and specialists of the local/district public administrations to deal with the transformation of the houses of culture into cultural services centers for the population. Under the project, six houses of culture are to be turned into community centers until 2013, Info-Prim Neo reports. Cultural Policy Center director Veaceslav Reabchinskii said the training contest is open to representatives of the houses of culture, nongovernmental organizations and local or district public authorities. There will be selected six teams that will be trained by foreign experts. “These persons will attend training courses and will pay working visits to a European country to see how similar centers work there. These teams will work out projects to reorganize the houses of culture so that they become cultural community centers,” said Veaceslav Reabchinskii. The project has a budget of US$300,000, of which more than a half is intended for training, while the rest will be offered as grants. Victoria Miron, Arts and Cultural Program Director at Soros Foundation Moldova, said that many countries have such cultural services centers that provide makeup, fitness and other types of courses, workshops, offers of studies, etc. The project is launched with the support of the Amsterdam-based European Cultural Foundation. In Moldova there are over 1 200 houses of culture, 600 of which are in need of extensive repair.