Care for 20 homeless people in Tbilisi, Georgia

Being young and homeless in Tblisi carries many risks.  One of them is getting in trouble with the police.  This is why we run a special legal service for homeless youngsters to make sure they are properly represented.

Some of you may remember Beso, who we have been helping for some time.  Back in 2014 Global Giving donors helped fund an emergency operation for him, since when he has been back in work and doing well.

This year, Beso and his friend were going home late from a birthday party. He was in a very good mood and he was singing. The boys got thirsty so they started searching for a sink in the Tbilisi yards (old yards usually has sinks in them in Tbilisi). The police who were patrolling that night saw the two boys moving from yard to yard so they thought they were trying to steal something from these yards. The policemen caught Beso and his friend for attempted theft, which means 4-7 years of prison, also rebellious activity (up to 3 years) and resisting the police (3-5 years).

We got into this case just in time. After our lawyer spoke to the investigator he agreed that the boys haven’t stolen anything and that the only thing they did wrong was minor rebellious activity (i.e. making a noise in a public place at night – in this case singing) and so the law-enforcers had to drop the theft case, the rebellious activity and resisting the police. This comes under the administrative code (which is a fine of 500-2000GEL), rather than being a criminal offence. In the court,after our lawyer’s speech the judge didn’t fine the boys and only gave them a warning.

The whole point of this story is that if our lawyer hadn’t got into this case in time, the boys would have been in prison for a minimum of 4 years.

During the last 3 months our legal service has looked after 15 cases.  Thanks to us 6 cases were terminated, 5 finished with non-custodial sentences, 2 finished with custodial sentences, and two are still in process.  In many cases, providing a legal defense is our first contact with a young person.  We are very grateful to all our Global Giving donors for helping us keep our shelter going, so that where needed we can offer food, a home and training to those who have nowhere else to go after their release.  

Your donation will help keep our young people safe.  If you are a UK-based donor, this week your donation could go even further.  Globalgiving.co.uk is offering to match donations up to £50 from 2pm  on Tuesday 25th October  to 2pm on Tuesday 1st November, or while funds last.  Please make your donation early in the bonus week if you'd like to see 50% added to your donation.  Prizes are also available to projects that attract the most donors, so whether you are able to give this time or not, please tell your friends!  Thank you!

At Mkurnali we don't just give homeless youngsters somewhere to live.  We work hard to help them back into training, education or employment.  We are celebrating at the moment because two of our beneficiaries successfully applied for jobs. One of them is manufacturing glass-packages in window and door factory, while the other works as a consultant in construction materials shop.  We are very proud of them and grateful to you for giving us the time to get them to this point.  We can't do any of this work if we can't feed our young people!

Over the summer we have been actively working on turning our enamel workshop into a sustainable enterprise. We have already organized four exhibitions in large organizations. We also took part in a popular local folk culture festival called Art Gen, where we practically sold out all our work. With the money we received we bought more materials and now we are getting ready for the Folk Crafts Festival held by US Embassy on September 27^th.

Our young people who are involved in this project are demonstrating great enthusiasm, even those with jobs outside our organization gladly join us for crafting after work. They all understand that we still need to work very hard in order to gather enough materials to turn our workshop into a profitable entity, and they do everything they can to speed up the process. 

On July 18^th we hosted guests from Global Giving. They visited us during the Art Gen festival, and they gladly accepted our invitation to join us and see our work process.  Before that, we took them with us also to EnergoPro Georgia, where our boys provide technical IT support. There we met the head of department who spoke with our guests about our many years of cooperation.  Afterwards we went to “Turtle Lake” where the festival Art Gen was taking place. We invited our guests to our corner. Our Mkurnali beneficiaries were very happy to host these guests.  By giving through Global Giving, you don't just help us feed our residents and reach out to young people still on the streets, you also open doors to us for training and support.  We are very grateful to the whole Global Giving team - you included!