Presentation at Bolnisi Youth Center

Salome Achba

On March 21st, the project of the organization Multinational Georgia was presented in Bolnisi Youth Center. The project entitled “Enhancing the Education level in the Sphere of Human Rights in Bolnisi Region” was implemented by the funding of Switzerland Embassy and aimed at advancing involvement of Bolnisi youth in different activities, including promotion of civic education.

 The Youth Center has been operating for five years now. It serves the goal of enhancing integration and civic education level of Georgian, Azerbaijani and Armenians youth. According to the young people, this center is the only place in the whole region where they can gain certain knowledge and represent their abilities.

“This center has been operating since 2007 and it radically changes the lives of many young people. Young people who come here start to better understand many issues. They become more open and tolerant to different national, ethnical or religious minorities. Periodically we conduct lectures for them regarding the issues of human rights, tolerance, cultural diversity and other important matters. Besides, we have free courses on foreign languages and computers. I think the basic knowledge gained here will assist these young people with the employment and contribute to their professional growth,” – states the director of Youth Center Irma Zurabashvili.

Under the frameworks of Multinational Georgia’s project many interesting activities have been conducted: a cycle of lectures in social journalism, tolerance, cultural diversity, national minorities, human rights and other interesting topics. Besides, young people studied the techniques of debates and discussed different relevant issues.

“The seminar on journalism was particularly interesting for me. My future profession is related to journalism and the knowledge gained at these seminars is important for me. I want to specially thank Mikheil Aidinov – journalist who led the lectures. By his merit, I am more fond of my future profession,” – stated Badri Kobiashvili, a participant of the project.

According to the statement of representatives of Switzerland Embassy, it decided to finance this project for three different aspects: it concerned youth, human rights and regions.

“This project was interesting to us because of these three aspects. Human rights are one of our priorities. It is also important that it focuses on young people. Young people in Georgia are very active and talented. However, unfortunately few have a chance to represent their talent. Obviously Tbilisi has more opportunities for them. Unfortunately, there is a different situation in the regions. That is why we are supporting implementation of these kinds of projects and activities. We should all remember that strong regions are the guarantee for the stability of the state in whole. There are a lot of potentials here that we use at maximum,” – stated the representative of Switzerland Embassy.

At the end of the meeting, the winner team of the public debates dedicated to the day of human rights defence was awarded. The so-called “diplomatic yard” was arranged in the yard of the Youth Center where the diplomatic corpus and NGOs planted trees.