Care for 20 homeless people in Tbilisi, Georgia

Thank you to everyone who has supported us through 2014.  Your donations have helped us to feed our residents, and because of that our shelter is more attractive for homeless teenagers.  However, food is only part of the story.  We work hard in partnership with a range of organisations to help our residents find training placements and employment so that they can look forward to a stable future as adults.

•  This year, with the help of with the help of MAC (McLain Association for Children), we started providing classes for 18 teenagers to help them catch up the basic education they lost while they were on the streets.  As ever, we have also concentrated on vocational skills.
•  One girl, with the help of Caritas Georgia, started a hairstyling and carpet sewing course.
  Three boys started working in a construction company as grinders and painters.
• One of the boys started working in a restaurant as a chef’s assistant.
• Two boys started working in the city’s cleaning service and another one in planting greenery with the help of Tinatin Shelia.
• Three young adults are going to learn to make enamel jewellery at a gallery in our city, also with the help of MAC.  When their training is complete, they will teach other  residents and we will re-establish our small enamel workshop. We plan to sell the jewellery to church shops, jewellery markets and to the gallery.  The income will provide an income for the jewellery-makers.

At the moment of course we are also preparing for our New Year celebrations.  The numbers living with us vary a lot, but for now we have 21 young people and 4 young children living at our shelter.  At New Year we open our shelter to any homeless teenagers who want to come.  We will provide a holiday dinner for as many as we can afford to feed.  Jemal our chef’s assistant, our friend Eka, our lawyer and another Jemal will make the food, while our old colleague Nino Miqeladze, who is now a restaurant manager and the head of a bakery, will bake us a holiday cake.  To complement our celebrations, the European Union delegation has just given us a big and beautiful Christmas tree, which will look wonderful in our shelter.

Your donation will help us to brighten up this festive period not only for our residents, already on the path to a happier future, but also for teenagers still living on the streets.  Thank you for reaching out to them so generously.