Tetritskaro Municipality, April 30, 2020 – As a rapid response to the COVID-19 crisis, with the support of the Tetritskaro Local Action Group (LAG), the Association Rural Development for Future Georgia (RDFG) moved the ENPARD Tetritskaro project to an electronic model. Despite the current situation, the Tetritskaro LAG General Assembly (89 people) continues activities envisaged by the project’s grants component and plans to discuss and approve the final results of the third grant competition remotely this week. At the same time, the Tetritskaro LAG is actively working on an awareness-raising campaign about the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), under which information posters in Georgian, Azerbaijani and Armenian are being distributed both electronically and locally.

As soon as the state of emergency was declared in the country, for continuous implementation of the ENPARD Tetritskaro project, with the active involvement and support of the Tetritskaro LAG, RDFG offered the project services to the beneficiaries electronically.

“Considering the reality we now face, when due to the spread of the virus, the municipality was quarantined, our main goal is to overcome the crisis without painful losses. Each member of the LAG has permanent communication with the implementing partner, RDFG – in turn, they are seeking the information about the local needs and determine the strategy for responding the crisis”, – Nino Tikurishvili, Tetritskaro LAG executive director.

The training components of the ENPARD Tetristskaro project – activities within the Employment Shuttle (ES), Vocational Education Trainings (VET), and Young Farmers Centers (YFC) have been implemented remotely for two months now. 18 participants of the Employment Shuttle are actively involved in both individual and group sessions, as well as in webinars and periodically receive video training materials. 30 residents of the Tetritskaro municipality take part in the distance VET activities and master in the professions that are in-demand at the local labour market. Moreover, with the initiative of the VET college Modus, the project participants will receive personal computers for temporary use with the financial accounting course on them. As for the YFCs, about 300 school students are intensively provided with extensive information on both modern agricultural technologies and coronavirus.

Tetritskaro Local Action Group was established with the support of the EU’s ENPARD project “Rural Development for Sustainable Growth in the Tetritskaro Municipality” implemented by Association Rural Development for Future Georgia (RDFG) in the municipality. Tetritskaro LAG is one among the twelve LAGs created with the EU support in different municipalities across Georgia.

The EU is supporting agriculture and rural development in Georgia through the ENPARD programme. The programme is implemented in Georgia since 2013 with a total budget of EUR 179.5 million. More information on ENPARD is available at www.enpard.ge.

Contact:
Nina Kopaleishvili – Communications Officer, RDFG; nkopaleishvili@rdfg.ge
Nelly Revazishvili – Rural Development Project Manager, RDFG; nrevazishvili@rdfg.ge