Fellowship Programme
Country
Area of Interest
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Updates coming soon!
| Country | Ukraine |
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| The budget development decisions | 0 |
Updates coming soon!
| Country | Ukraine |
| The scope of | |
| Type of solution | |
| The technology used | |
| The budget development decisions | 0 |
Tinatin Bregvadze is the Chair of the Board of the Georgian Centre for Strategy and Development, a large, highly-regarded non-governmental organisation based in Tbilisi and operating through projects in Georgia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. She has more than 20 years’ experience working with national and international CSOs, as well as a more recent rewarding experience as Director of the Diplomatic Training and Research Institute under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In taking on the Institute directorship, Tinatin was tasked with reforming and strengthening the institution and applying her academic background, including her current pursuit of a PhD in Education. After 3 years at the Institute Tinatin returned to her role at GCSD and pursuing her passion of creating opportunity for diverse groups in society and particularly the more vulnerable communities.
Tinatin has a long track record in developing and implementing interventions that support a more just and socially equal society, and ‘the community’ is at the heart of her motivations:
“Grassroots is where the ‘real’ life is, so when refugees from Ukraine began to arrive in Tbilisi I knew I had to do something”. That ‘something’ was to formulate a project which would combine an immediate humanitarian response with specific educational methodologies that would support both children and parent refugees. As Tinatin explains, “Ukrainian children who were suddenly ripped away from their normal life of playing with friends, going to school, having fun, and instead subjected to the horrors of being a refugee. Having met some of these refugees I immediately developed some activities to support them. Unfortunately, at that time in Georgia, there was limited access to resources to assist the refugees, so I was delighted to learn about the opportunities of the Solidarity Fellowships, which was exactly what I identified with.”
And so Tinatin’s Civil Society Fellowship began.
Tinatin together with her colleagues developed an approach that would engage the Ukrainian children and youth, and provide support to their parents to integrate into their new surroundings. She formed a team of artists and art educators, and counsellors, and managed to run a summer of art classes involving 50 children, and to organise movie screenings, talks and city site visits. The children’s art classes even culminated in a final exhibition held at Tbilisi’s Centre of Contemporary Art.
“Interestingly, although my fellowship involved a number of carefully structured activities and provision of safe space for Ukrainian children, it was the informal coming together of the mothers of the children which may have had the biggest impact.” By nurturing the involvement of the mothers, Tinatin was able to provide them with opportunities to talk about their experiences and to build up new friendships. This process was the essence of the ‘solidarity’ fellowship.
Of course, as an educationalist, Tinatin is happy that the specific methodologies used in working with the children (and parents) during the art classes were effective and that they will be sustained. The ‘package’ of art classes and methods have been institutionalised within a local parent/artists informal group and during 2023 a revised set of classes will be delivered to other vulnerable children through the organisation ‘Parallel Class’.
“The programme we developed is quite unique as it is more oriented on socialisation and the involvement of children in group activities. This is one of the reasons why ‘Parallel Class’ plans to continue the programme, incorporating into it the lessons learnt throughout this process. They will make it available for Georgian and Ukrainian kids. This is good news and was possible only because of all the hard work of the teachers, artists and other volunteers that helped me make it happen.”
| Country | Georgia |
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| The budget development decisions | 0 |
Updates coming soon!
| Country | Ukraine |
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| The budget development decisions | 0 |
From the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ivano-Frankivsk, the hometown of the 27-years-old lawyer and PhD law student Mykola Ostapiak, became a transit hub for thousands of Ukrainians who were fleeing the war. Exhausted, disoriented and terrified, these people needed every help available, from clothing and shelter to assistance with restoring lost documents. Many of them witnessed shocking war crimes committed by Russian soldiers, and their testimonies were important to restore justice and fight Russian propaganda.
By that time, Mykola had already been working for four years at the Law Clinic of the Educational Scientific Law Institute of Precarpathian National University where he provided free legal assistance to citizens, so he immediately jumped into action
“I wanted to be useful whenever it was possible. I wanted to apply my legal knowledge and expertise to help people get compensations for the damages caused by the war, as well as to help our state authorities investigate war crimes or collect evidence”.
And the European Union’s EaP Civil Society Fellowship programme gave him the opportunity to carry out these activities on a new level. Mykola realized that every testimony was incredibly important, both for the Ukrainian investigators, prosecutors and security service, as well as for historians. He needed to act quickly as majority of internally displaced people (IDPs) stayed in Ivano-Frankivsk only for a short period of time, before going further, and memories become less detailed over time. To meet the time challenge, Mykola mobilized and trained a group of legal professionals – his co-workers from the university and the legal clinic, law students and paralegals from Postupovyy Gurt Frankivtsiv CSO – who worked with him on collecting the testimonies and providing legal assistance to IDPs.
During his 8-months Fellowship project Mykola’s team collected 221 testimonies of IDPs, including evidence of 195 attacks and damage of civil infrastructure, 47 war crimes of killing or wounding civilians, 9 instances of starvation of the civilian population, 12 cases of kidnapping, 4 instances of torture, and 88 crimes involving the seizure of property.
“In the beginning it was very hard for me and my team. Psychologically I was not ready for this, even after the training”, confesses Mykola, whose previous experience was mostly related with everyday life legal matters. “I thought I would not be able to continue because one cannot listen to those stories and remain indifferent.”
But they did continue. Their professionalism combined with compassion drove dozens of IDPs based in Ivano-Frankivsk to the legal clinic to seek help and testify the injustice and war crimes they had witnessed. Together with his team, Mykola travelled to remote cities and villages in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, to speak and help those who could not make it to town.
Mykola’s passion for his profession is rooted in his natural desire to help others. He says that people’s emotions and gratitude for help and advice is a constant reminder he is doing the right thing. Within his Fellowship project, his team also provided legal assistance to 85 IDPs, consulting them on social benefits and financial assistance, border crossing, recovery of documents, etc., and distributed 1,300 copies of the informational booklet explaining their rights as IDPs. “We had a case when a local entrepreneur was reluctant to hire an IDP. After one consultation on the state support to those employing IDPs, he not only hired the person, but was open to employ more people in the same situation”, remembers Mykola.
According to Mykola, the OSCE has already used some testimonies in its report, and Mykola proudly mentions the Russian government entered the 5 AM Coalition – and the Postupovyy Gurt Frankivtsiv as the coalition member – into its notorious list of ‘undesirable organisations’.
“Every story is a drop into the ocean of justice. And it will be these very stories and testimonies that will help to restore justice after the war”, concludes Mykola. “I dream of victory, of damages to be repaid to every person and – this may sound naïve – that every guilty person, not only Putin, but every soldier who committed a war crime, will be prosecuted and held accountable”.
| Country | Ukraine |
| The scope of | |
| Type of solution | |
| The technology used | |
| The budget development decisions | 0 |
Updates coming soon!
| Country | Ukraine |
| The scope of | |
| Type of solution | |
| The technology used | |
| The budget development decisions | 0 |
Updates coming soon!
| Country | Ukraine |
| The scope of | |
| Type of solution | |
| The technology used | |
| The budget development decisions | 0 |
Updates coming soon!
| Country | Ukraine |
| The scope of | |
| Type of solution | |
| The technology used | |
| The budget development decisions | 0 |
Updates coming soon!
| Country | Ukraine |
| The scope of | |
| Type of solution | |
| The technology used | |
| The budget development decisions | 0 |
Updates coming soon!
| Country | Ukraine |
| The scope of | |
| Type of solution | |
| The technology used | |
| The budget development decisions | 0 |