Ekaterine Gamakharia, Head of the Tbilisi Representative Office of the Fund "Sukhumi" has participated in a meeting organized by the Association “Peaceful and Business Caucasus”. The meeting was dedicated to the situation of the fire-affected population in Gali district. The representative of Fund “Sukhumi” has made a presentation and informed meeting participants about key findings and urgent needs of fire-affected population reflected in the organization’s recently published rapid-assessment report.
The meeting was attended by the civil society organizations working on the issues of IDPs and conflict-affected population, representatives of the de jure authorities of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, and the fire-affected persons.
The response strategies and actions of joint efforts were actively discussed during the meeting.
Violence is very often caused by gender stereotypes, so it is necessary to solve them, and the school can play a major role in this process.
“Gender stereotypes and the role of schools in their solution” is a short film prepared by the Tbilisi Representative Office of the Fund “Sukhumi”. The film shows one of the directions of the Fund "Sukhumi" - work with youth and the results of this work, the experience and the lessons learned.
Searching for the funds, registtarion of civic organizations, self-presentation, presentation of results - all these questions were necessary, interesting and useful. Therefore, the mobilizers of the Women Support Centers were actively involved participated in the process of two-day online training.
The participants got acquainted with the procedure of registering the organization, with the necessary documents. Particularly interesting was the part of the training, which was devoted to the skills of self-presentation, presenting the results of activities and formulating these results in a success story.
The pandemic has taught Forum Theatre actors many new things: shooting videos, editing, selecting music backgrounds, etc.
Young people worked online in February too. Their work, personal videos on various topical issues, has appeared on the Facebook page of Fund "Sukhumi".
From March, Forum Theatre actors will perform in various city parks and squares.
On February 18-19, a two-day training was held with representatives of local self-governments of Imereti, Samegrelo, Guria and Adjara. The issue of the strategy of gender equality, organizational, technical and methodological aspects of the municipality was discussed on the first day. The second day was devoted to the development of municipality action plans.
The training participants had interesting presentations on the approaches existing in the municipalities, successful practices and challenges.
“A very necessary project”, “You are really doing a big job”, “Training on these issues, should take place throughout Georgia”, “I am ready to cooperate”, “The conflict expert is already working in a second circle in our school. “Our school is always open for you", "Thank you very much for the work done", "We are waiting for you in Chokhatauri municipality, we promise to work actively"," We follow your work, and are delighted with your young people"- these and similar considerations were expressed or recorded in a chat during a meeting on the Zoom platform.
How did the impact of the pandemic affect family relationships? What problems do married couples have, and what resources are available for early prevention of domestic conflicts? - these issues have been discussed online with family couples living in Terjola, Senaki, Kutaisi, Khoni.
The participants believe that conflict situations are exacerbated by unemployment and psychological tension. As they say, the adaptation period was especially difficult for primary school students, who found it difficult to switch from an online format to attending lessons at school.
It was noted that a conflict situation could arise in any family. Such meetings, communication, and raising awareness on these topics reduce confrontation between couples and help prevent conflict.
This is the first successful result of cooperation with Kobuleti local self-government!
It all started like this:
The Fund "Sukhumi" has been cooperating with the Gender Equality Councils of local self-governments since the day of their creation. Kobuleti municipality was included in this list in 2019. It was the only one, out of 11 municipalities, that did not have a single program to assist violence victims.
The advocacy and monitoring group and Tbilisi representative office of the Fund "Sukhumi" started active work to develop the program.
They are already leaders, as they conduct the activities of Women Support Centers in 11 municipalities. They attended many trainings, but teaching and learning is never superfluous. Therefore, a two-day training was held for the mobilizers of the Women Support Centers, where they discussed topical topics: the phenomenon of leadership, civic activism, advocacy strategy.
The online space has become a platform for the participants to share their knowledge and information. They saw leadership, teamwork and advocacy issues in a new prism.
“Schools against challenges of gender equality, gender stereotypes and domestic violence” - a new publication - this publication was prepared by the monitoring and advocacy group of the Fund “Sukhumi” last year. It reflects the results of a research, carried out in 11 municipalities of Western Georgia. Active work is underway to implement targeted policies in schools against gender stereotypes.
In this process, our partner is the newspaper "New Education", which has been published once a week since 1998, and is distributed among subscribers - in schools and universities of Georgia, as well as in government and non-government organizations working in the field of education. An even wider audience is covered by the online version of the newspaper.