By Nino Chubabria and Sarah Gale | Project Leader and Project Director
Usually we try to make our reports upbeat. After all, we have many wonderful things to report. With your help we are able to change many people's lives. This month, however, it's harder to sound cheerful. Corona virus continues to ravage our country. Vaccination rates are low, and we have as many as 6,000 new Covid cases a day at the moment with up to 65 daily deaths. Our population is only 4,000,000, so you can see the scale of this wave.
Covid took Lia Salakaia, our singing teacher and a great friend of our organisation. Currently, Inga Bibleishvili, our lawyer who represents homeless and vulnerable young people, is ill and her sister Lali is helping us instead. Many of the young people we help have also suffered from this terrible disease.
The indirect economic effects of the pandemic are also taking their toll. Two weeks ago one of our former beneficiaries committed suicide. Our residents continue to make enamel jewelery (see photo), and the garage is still working when there are customers. Our workshops can't work to full capacity however because of trying to reduce social contacts and because demand still hasn't picked up.
However, we do have some good news. We congratulate Luka's sister, who has started university with our support. You may remember her brother's story: he dreamed of going to university and ended up working on the streets to help his mother. He passed away with cancer eighteen months ago. We continue to help his family to this day.
Our young gymnastics star, Kristina, has also been able to go to a team meeting in Bukariani. She has shown incredible determination, continuing to train through the last year, even when she had to do it in our living room.
We have also found the money to get our roof fixed, and work will start soon.
The other good news is that this week GlobalGiving are offering a 50% bonus on all donations up to $50. So if you donate 50 USD (aprox £35) we receive an additional $25 (£17.50) to help our residents and ex-residents through this difficult time. The offer runs until midnight EDT on Friday 17th September.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
