Vocational Training for IDPs offers better life

One of Giorgi Sherozia's works by Vocational Training


Giorgi Sherozia was born in Sukhumi, Abkhazia at just the wrong time. He was a four-month-old baby when his parents fled the war with four children and moved to a shelter in Senaki. His family never truly got on their feet again financially, and all are still living in shelters, including the older married siblings. When his parents died both within the past two years, Giorgi and his next-youngest sister moved to live with an aunt in shelter at Factory 31, closer to Tbilisi.
So the fact that Sherozia, who will turn 18 in March, now has a job as a professional engraver with a local carpenter means that at least for him, the family fortunes may have finally turned more.
“My aunt sells cheese in the bazaar. Now I can work and earn money for my family, “he said.
Sherozia got the job thanks to a vocational training program run by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which he found about by a notice posted up in collective center. After five months training he was employed, along with the six best pupils of the group as an engraver. ”He had no absence. This kind of pupil motivates us to do our best,” said Manana Niazashvili, the deputy of director of Multi-field Professional College, which offers the courses for NRC.
Currently there are around 230,000 refugees from the 1991 Abkhazian conflict and throughout Georgia and about 96,000 of them still live in collective centers and suffer financially according to the statistics of the Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation. More than 26,000 refugees added to these 230,000 IDPs from the August 2008 conflict in South Ossetia. That’s why the Norwegian Refugee Council is expanding its professional training courses for refugees, also known as internally displaced persons, starting in March, for 700 IDPs from both the 1990s war in Abkhazia and the more recent conflict last August in South Ossetia.
Each course is five months, and tuition is paid to a local professional training school In addition to professional skills each course involves one week training on computer programs, entrepreneurship and health issues like HIV and drug prevention.
Fifty-nine groups, each with 16 students, will start studying at the same time throughout the country. The participants must be between 17and 25 years old, who don’t have high education or any kind of profession and have hard social conditions. Project organizers say this project gives participants an opportunity to get specialized at concrete level of any profession.
“As we don’t have a lot of time we teach them very concrete specialties like cook and confectioner separately and not both of them together,” said Manana Kvachakhia, NRC’s training program leader.
After finishing the course the students will get a state certificate from the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, and will be employed with the help of the project leadership. They will also be able to open some small companies on the territory of professional institutes.
The project started one year ago with 500 pupils in Tbilisi, with nearly half getting employed after finishing the training in Imereti, Samegrelo, Qvemo and Shida Kartli, Samtskhe-Javakheti, Adzharia and Kakheti. They design courses around the most in-demand professions, such as cooks, tailor, confectioners, stylists, bartenders andadministrators.The last three are especially popular in Adzharia because of tourism development.
The NRC program establishes connection with potential employers; researching which profession any certain region needs and advises applicants which course they should take.
“This year most of the applicants from Gori applied for masseur and hairdressers, but we refused to make further courses to this direction in this region. We advised them take another courses, because they can’t be employed in the future. Our point is their employment, not just only specialization,” said Kvachakhia
NRC contends this project is one of the most important parts of their IDP integration program.
“Shelter rehabilitation, Education and free legal assistance are the core point of our activity to maintain the reintegration of so called old and new IDPs in Georgia, Manana Gabashvili, the Deputy of Director of NRC. They also issued the set of school text-books_ “The Way to Human Rights” for children as well for teachers and even parents.
NRC thinks it has already exhausted its mission in Georgia. It is their last instructive project there. They are going to close down their office in Georgia after two years and hand over the project of Professional prepare to the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia.