Care for 20 homeless people in Tbilisi, Georgia

When Georgia went into lockdown, our residents all lost their jobs and their income overnight.  Our social business refilling printer cartridges also had to shut, so we lost a valuable source of funds.  This story is of course repeated thousands of times over, and many do not have the resiliance to cope.  

Not long ago, one of our residents saw a news report about a lad who tried to commit suicide.  He had lost his job, and with no income, he had also been evicted.  Vano recognised the young man because they grew up together in an orphanage, and he asked me to help him.  When I watched the story, I also recognised the young man.  He had been arrested about ten years ago for stealing toy binoculars.  He was then a child living on the streets of Batumi and Tbilisi, and he survived by begging and stealing.

We got involved and saved him from prison on condition that we took responsibility for him.  He came and lived in our shelter for two years.  After this time he started working and living independently, until he lost his job because of Corona virus.  After seeing the story, Jemal found him and brought him back.  He now lives at our shelter again, and will stay here until he can start work again.

Our daily life has changed of course.  The shelter is busy all day with parents and children unable to leave the house.  Fortunately, homeless young people in our city have been housed in orphanages, so we no longer need to take food out to them on the streets.  However, we still feel responsibility for families who have lived with us in the past, or who received training from us.  Wherever possible, we are delivering food parcels to them, with the necessary social distancing, of course.

Thank goodness we have also had some happy news.  We heard that one of our former beneficiaries has become a father.  One of our younger residents also celebrated his second birthday at our shelter.

We hope that you are all keeping safe and well, and thank you for your solidarity at this difficult time for us all.

Links:

• The news report that sparked an urgent mission to save a life

In December we received the money for the New Year celebration kindly donated by the donors on GlobalGiving and we started our preparations with great joy. However soon we received very sad news. Those of you with long memories may remember Luka, a boy with 5 siblings, whose father died. Luka’s mother was sick and unable to work, his elder sister and brother were studying well and they couldn’t afford to work, since they had a lot of study. Luka was fast at doing his homework and had more free time, so he decided to get a little money from the street and help out his mother. This is how our assistant Jemal met him and brought him to Mkurnali. Since that time Luka has never worked on the streets again.  

Luka is 14 years old now and it turned out that he is now struggling with one of the deadliest types of cancer. When this news was broken to Mkurnali’s residents, our young people refused to celebrate New Year and instead decided to buy and share essential food products between the present and former families that Mkurnali has helped, including Luka’s family. Amongst our beneficiaries were Marina’s family (4 children, between 6 and 12 years old and 5 adults), Christina and Arthur’s family (4 children, 4-6 years old and two adults with learning disabilities) and other families. The children were keen to help us buy food and joined us on a few shopping trips.  

For us it was our way to express our sympathy to Luka and make little kids from other families happy. Thank you to every one of you for supporting us.