Civic education Summer School in Borjomi, Georgia 8 - 12 August

FLEX Alumni Natia Sharikadze '08 and Shorena Megrelishvili '08 held the Civic Education Summer School in Borjomi, Georgia from August 8 to August 12. The project was conducted via FLEX Alumni Grants Program.
American Councils for International Education announces annual grant competition for the FLEX Alumni, which is dedicated to the projects for civic engagement, social and economical problems, and so on.. A lot of FLEX Alumni have been involved so far in this competition and they have written the grant projects to help orphanages, local schools, children with disabilities, etc. This time, Natia Sharikadze '08 wrote a grant project to hold a Civic Education Summer School in Borjomi, her hometown. Generally, there are two different types of grants: individual and group grants. Individual grants are financed with up to $250 and group ones with up to $3000. Civic Education Summer School took much less, though it turned out very successful.

Day 1 began when the chosen participants arrived in the Borjomi Public School # 3. They were 8th and 9th graders from Borjomi and 4other surrounding villages: Rveli, Akhaldaba, Likani and Kvibisi. All of them seemed pretty excited and interested in what this summer school would be like. In the applications which they filled in, they wrote that they expected to get more educated, and at the same time get to know more people, make friends and have fun..

When everyone gathered in the classroom, Natia and Shorena announced the school to be open. The summer School started with introducing each other,  team-building games and  ice breakers.
Starting from this day, the agenda was pretty similar: from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m – team-building and energizer games and then work! Everyday two different trainings were held, with lunch and dinner breaks in the middle.
Trainings which were held during the summer school were: Civic Participation, Effective Leadership, Effective team-work, Democracy and other different ideologies, Volunteering and Being active citizen, Tolerance and Diversity, Gender equality and in the end, FLEX PR.

Summer school started everyday at 10:00 a.m and ended at 6:00 p.m. Besides the actual trainings and seminars, they had to complete some practical tasks, such as grant-project writing and becoming an effective team while working on one concrete project.

 Participants watched a movie “Freedom Writers” ( after Tolerance and Diversity Training) in order to better understand an idea of tolerance and diversity and they also were taken to clean up a small area outside the school after volunteering training.

Participants were involved in different fun activities as well, such as  intellectual games and  competition in volleyball.
Project Leaders would like to tell Special Thank You to Khatuna Kharazishvili  - The Head Teacher of Borjomi Public School #3 for her support thought the project.

Planting Trees - Serving the Environment GYSD Grant Project Part II

  On Saturday, 30th of April It was planned that we_all members of ,, Future Leaders Society” must gather  in the centre of our town and go to plant trees in  a place  which lacks the trees . It was 11 o`clock  and everybody was in place and ready to go.  In the bus we carred foods which was bought by our  Coordinator. Everybody  was excited, because we were going to do  very   necessary  business. We knew that nowadays it`s a  big problem about cutting tress which is very bad for our nature, for our planet  and for our health.  We know that   clean and  fresh area around us is very necessary  for our healthy future  that`s why we decided to do this.
         When  we arrived in Daba we begun  working. We distributed  spades, took  saplings, departed in several groups  and begun digging.  For most of us  it was first time to plant a tree but we set things going easily .  We had 150 saplings and we had to plant all of them.  Digging and planting isn`t easy for girls  but we weren`t  behind boys. Some of  us planted 5-6  saplings in average  and  and we felt very satisfied.
   About two hours later we finished planting and were very tired and hungry, although  the result  covered  tiredness. We had lunch, snacks, refreshments and  rested  a little.  Then we began playning several games and this  revived a little. We took  memorable photos. We made initials of  our society ,, Future Leaders Society”  by ourselves and it was very fun.

    ….  But we had to leave, because  it started  to rain. We were grateful to the nature for the water it provided for our little trees. We arrived  in borjomi  with full sense of  success.  And I think that this day will be in our memory forever.

You can see Borjomi TV company coverage of our event on the following link http://www.mediacentri.ge/?42/148/

I would like to take a chance and thank American Councils for International Education and Borjomi Municipality Community Chair Mr. Besik Kurdadze for their Material and Financial support.

Qeti Baburishvili
Borjomi Public School #3
Future Leaders Society

Global Youth Service Day - Clean Up in Borjomi

This morning started with heavy rain and nobody was sure about the today's plans, even though all of us were meeting at Borjomi Public School #3 at 2 o'clock to go for a clean up. The rain lasted until 1 o'clock and than it stopped as somebody was praying for our event. As tree planting mission was postponed because of the weather we couldn't take another bad weather.

Everybody was at school even before 2 o'clock, and everyone seemed so excited. Than Our Coordinator arrived and we discussed our project and what, how and who was going to do it. I had to take pictures and write article about the event. I was very pleased as this is my favorite thing to do.
We talked about our Future plans such as planting trees on 30th of April, which is the second part of our project and than we left for our destination. It isn't far away, just 5 minutes walk from school. The place is Memorial which is called "vechni ogon" which is in Russian and it says "everlasting fire" this memorial is in honor of people who died in Second World War. Even though the territory is in the center of town it is very polluted by the refugees who live about this memorial and they keep throwing their litter on the ground. Our team members got the gloves and the trash bags and started clean-up.

The clean up started at 2:30 and my team members had a lot of fun during the process, we were enthusiastic about the event. there where approx. 160 trash bags full of litter. During the event people would stop and ask what where we doing and why. We were really proud to provide information to them. After all the bags where filled we started to carry them till the nearer trash bin, which was 200 meters away. But we had to make 3 round trips to get all the trash to the bin. it was too much fun and the biggest outcome was that people would stop by and say that the new generation is very responsible and that they are very proud of us. We felt that we where doing a good thing for our community and that's what matters the most.
We are looking forward to the other part of the project. I won't to take a chance and write a thank you for Borjomi Municipality Community Chair Mr. Besik Qurdadze for his support in our project and American Councils for International Education and GYSD matching grant program for the material and financial support they have or will provide during this project.

Sofiko Sherozia

Borjomi Public School #6
16.04.2011