Teaching digital skills to young people in Georgia
Published: Mar 18, 2022 Reading time: 2 minutes
As part of the EU-funded “COVID-19 Solidarity Programme for the Eastern Partnership” project in Georgia, targeting young people in the municipalities of Gurjaani, Sighnaghi, Akhalkalaki, Akhalstikhe, and Kazbegi, a group of 70 beneficiaries, made up largely of young women from different social groups, was trained in digital marketing, web development, and business development.
The training sessions were offered by the Innovative Education Foundation, one of PIN’s eleven partner organisations in Georgia, with the aim of helping graduates of the programme get paid internships in social media marketing and web development.
Marta Bibilashvili, PIN Project Manager in Georgia, says: “The pandemic has created hardships for people worldwide, but they are even more severe for people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups in underserved communities. The COVID-19 solidarity project enabled our partner CSOs to provide need-based services to their beneficiaries, which helped them to overcome not only the barriers that were created during the pandemic, but also to get assistance such as job training that will contribute to their long-term well-being.”
Salome Tabatadze, 17, from the town of Akhaltsikhe, has gained valuable work experience from the initiative. Thanks to the social media marketing training she received, she was able to get an internship. Salome says, “I was hired by a company to be their social media manager. We prepared posts, posted them on Facebook, and worked on visual materials. The knowledge I gained about social media and website development was very specific and very useful.”
Armine Uranyan is a 21-year-old university student from Akhalkalaki. When her classes moved online due to COVID-19, she found she had time to attend the trainings. Armine says, “What I liked most was the web programming, where we worked with WordPress. I later did my internship in this field and continued to study programming, as I liked it very much and wanted to make a career of it.” Thanks to training she received, Uranyan is now employed as a web specialist.
People in Need (PIN) is working alongside civil society organisations in Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine to mitigate the adverse effects of COVID-19 and contribute to the longer-term socioeconomic resilience of vulnerable groups in Eastern Europe. The EU-funded “COVID-19 Solidarity Programme for the Eastern Partnership” project is being implemented by PIN in partnership with the Netherlands Helsinki Committee and AFEW International.
