“The goal of the project is to effectively combat the growing problem of domestic violence against women and children in Georgia. According to a report by the Association of Young Lawyers, in 2023, domestic violence has become the most frequently recorded crime in the country. Therefore, our project aims to provide holistic support and develop Georgia’s domestic violence prevention system at the local, municipal, and state levels.” 

Building Professional Staff and Infrastructure 

Our aim is long-term change through the development of knowledgeable and professional specialists and experts who provide services according to the highest standards, with full respect for the dignity of the beneficiaries. A key element is also improving the infrastructure of state and non-governmental shelters for victims of violence, as well as ensuring safety and effective forms of support and socio-economic rehabilitation. 

Professionalization of the Domestic Violence Prevention System 

The project focuses on raising awareness and knowledge among professional groups involved in domestic violence prevention. Therefore, police officers from the Samegrelo region, local child protection services, and social workers are receiving essential training from HumanDoc to effectively carry out interventions and protect victims of violence. We place special emphasis on continuing the training that began in 2018. 

Long-term, Multilevel Assistance 

Improving the infrastructure of the protection system for victims of violence is another priority. We plan to renovate and equip the residential part of the largest shelter for women and children experiencing violence, located in Gori. At the same time, we are expanding support services in the Samegrelo region through the Family Support Center, which will provide legal aid, information, counselling, and vocational courses for victims of violence. 

As a result of our efforts, victims of domestic violence in Georgia will have better access to support and rehabilitation services. Renovated shelters, professional staff, and expanded support services will help build lasting foundations for Georgia’s domestic violence prevention system, which will serve those in need for many years. 

DONATOR

The project co-financed from the state budget under the Polish development cooperation program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland

Georgia. A country attracting lots of tourists every year. In its modern capital have been placed automatic food dispensers for stray dogs. In this country, in 2016, 25 women died as a result of domestic violence. 

The scale of the problem of domestic violence in Georgia can be best described by the story of a policeman, who took part in one of the trainings organized by HumanDoc Foundation. After completing the training, he admitted that he realized, he was a perpetrator of domestic violence himself.

For many years now, HumanDoc Foundation has been conducting systemic activities in Georgia, such as domestic violence prevention and strengthening the victim protection system. Since 2018, together with the local organization “Merkuri”, we’ve been helping women and children start a new, safe life, free from violence and aggression.

We are able to do that because we opened the first in western Georgia shelter for women and children, who experienced domestic violence. The shelter is a place, where women and children can survive the crisis, find their balance and strength to prepare for a new life without violence, but with rebuilt self-esteem and financial independence, achieved thanks to the vocational trainings organized by the Foundation.

Help from HumanDoc and its partners is based on a few activities:

– We ensure shelter and a place to live for women and children, who escaped from their homes.

– Our beneficiaries can receive the support of a psychologist, lawyer and social worker. – We also run a support center, where women and children, who faced the problem of domestic violence, but don’t need to live in the shelter, can receive professional advice.  

– Our effective actions are possible thanks to our cooperation with local police, social services and other non-governmental organizations.

Building women’s financial independence 

We help women become financially independent, thanks to which they can leave their husbands or families who use violence. As the first ones in Georgia, we prepared a system of conducting vocational trainings adjusted to the needs of our beneficiaries. Thanks to these courses they can improve their qualifications during e.g. computer and accounting course, massage course, gardening or stylization courses.

Women who completed such courses said multiple times that if it wasn’t for the good atmosphere, flexible schedule (sometimes the classes are conducted on Sundays) and the care provided for their children while they were learning, they never would have dared to take such steps.

We raise women’s self esteem

Throughout the duration of the project, we noticed an urgent need of therapeutic work both with women and the children, for whom we prepared specialized programs of psychological support.

 While going out from the problem of domestic violence, it is vitally important to receive the proper support in making decisions and solidarity, thanks to which women know that they are not abandoned. Bearing that in mind, we have established a Women’s Club – a place, which offers exactly those things. Women can meet there regularly, share their experiences, participate in workshops with a psychologist and other specialists.

Within our project, we cooperate with groups of professions, which are included in the domestic violence prevention system. In the years 2016-2020, we conducted in 4 regions specialized trainings in domestic violence for:

We have trained a group of psychologists, who are now professionally prepared to work with domestic violence victims, as well as a group of trainers, who are now able to conduct their own trainings in domestic violence prevention.

 Trained teachers conducted in their schools various actions for students and their parents aimed at raising awareness of the problem. A few thousand people participated in them. Additionally, our experts, who run programs about domestic violence prevention, appeared regularly in two radio stations. 

Have you ever wondered, what it feels like to lose your vision? And in addition, not to be able to hear, what is going on in your surrounding? Never to hear the voice of your mom? Or your own child?

Nino knows this feeling. It’s not only the darkness. It’s also the sense of lack of balance. Lack of control. It’s as if she was underwater and couldn’t get out above the surface. Deprived of the ability to see, she took her first shaky steps, trying to feel with her hands the world around. Yet it was still impossible without a caregiver. – I realized, how difficult the life of the blind is and how often I add to their misery by not sharing sufficient information with the society – Nino says.

Her blindness was just temporary. It was just an exercise, fully controlled and supervised, during workshops where Nino and other students were learning about the world of the deaf-blind community. It was one of many trainings prepared by HumanDoc Foundation and our partners in Georgia to improve the quality of life of the deaf-blind.

The deaf-blind persons have visual and hearing disabilities at the same time. Their situation is especially difficult, as the limitation of senses cannot be compensated with hearing or vision.

We have to act because currently the topic of deaf-blind community in Georgia is virtually non-existent, and the awareness of the problems is close to zero. Additionally, people even with one ability (e.g. visual or hearing) are afraid of stigmatization. A person ashamed of their health problems often tends to ignore other disabilities which might appear “in order not to cause any more problems to their families”. A lot of visual or hearing impairments could be prevented to some extent if periodic medical tests were more commonly conducted.

In order to change that, we have opened four Support Clubs for the deaf-blind persons in Tbilisi, Batumi, Zugdidi and Telavi. At the same time, together with our local partners, we were the first ones to start in Georgia activities aimed at building support and care system for the deaf-blind community. Our actions are based on over 30 years of experience of our experts from the Polish Support Organization for the Deaf-Blind.

In the Club, we conduct educational workshops for the deaf-blind and their families. We organize informative meetings for the local authorities and non-governmental organizations. Our Clubs are equipped with modern devices, helping the deaf-blind with everyday life, including optical equipment – different kinds of magnifying glasses and eye charts. Additionally, Club in Tbilisi, which should play a role of a diagnostic and rehabilitation center, received a case of corrective lenses, simulators of eye defects, tonometer which measures pressure in eyeball. Thanks to these purchases, it will be possible to conduct some basic tests and to detect ocular defects in our beneficiaries.

Within the scope of HumanDoc’s activities, we run also specialized medical tests for our beneficiaries. For many of them, this is the first opportunity for many years to check their current health condition. Thanks to our project, by the end of 2019 we examined over 100 with both visual and hearing disabilities.

At the same time, we train our local experts, who will be professionally prepared to work with the deaf-blind community.

In 2018, together with Polish and Georgian linguists, we managed to create a Georgian version of Lorma alphabet, the so-called GeoLorm. It’s one of the ways for the deaf-blind persons to communicate. 1 700 people have already watched the training video, which presents the use of GeoLorm.

When back in 2016, we started working in Georgia, it became very clear to us that we have to support women experiencing domestic violence. With time, we opened a shelter, which was for them a kind of safe haven. Our first beneficiaries, thanks to the support of experts from Merkuri organization, started a new life.

 Lali took advantage of a municipal program – she is renting an apartment from the city. Etuna, Natia and Tea, thanks to our vocational courses, opened their own small businesses. Keti, together with her husband, with the assistance of a psychologist, participated in marriage mediations, and for 1.5 year now their home has been free from violence.

Violence hurts not only women, but also children and men themselves, who often cannot handle their aggression well. Even if they want to work on themselves, there are no places, where they could seek support. This is why, in November 2019, after a major renovation of the building, we opened a Family Support Center in Zugdidi. Everyone, who experiences violence, can turn to specialists for help – children, youth, women and men. Specialists offer legal and psychological support, as well as correction program for the perpetrators. This is the first initiative of this kind, offering such a wide range of services in the country.

One of the beneficiaries is a wife of a soldier, Tengiza. He took part in a mission in Afghanistan. After he came back, he couldn’t cope with his normal, “civilian” life. The reaction he knew and trained was aggression. Tengiza’s wife, together with her children, started to seek psychological support. Tengiza, after receiving encouragement from his supervisors, decided to take part in psychological consultations as well. At the same time, Tako – the psychologist, started conducting a marriage therapy. Tengiza’s wife has recently thanked Tako. She doesn’t remember the last time when their home was free from violence and screaming for such a long time. Each individual story is extremely important. It also shows, how needed are such centers with professional team, which is ready and prepared to help every person, who struggles with the problem of violence.

In HumanDoc we try to create such conditions and opportunities, so that there are more places of that kind.

While conducting the anti-violence activities in Georgia we realized that domestic violence, which is one of the biggest social problems of this country, is among others a consequence of low level of awareness and lack of proper education. And that’s not only the case with less educated part of society, but also with specialists and representatives of professions of public trust.

Policemen who completed our training admitted that for many of them it was the first course in the field of domestic violence. Part of the officers had very stereotypical views on women’s role and blamed only them for situations when domestic violence occurred.

Teachers emphasized that there is no access to information regarding the proper reaction to violence and chaos of competences, which consequently makes many teachers too afraid to react to signals regarding domestic violence, as they don’t have sufficient knowledge in this field.

We approached also doctors with questions related to domestic violence problems: 60 % of the responders were not aware of their obligation to report any domestic violence cases of their patients. 90% didn’t know that they could face a punishment for failing to react. Doctors had also no competences in terms of conversation with a person experiencing violence. Lack of understanding the mechanisms of this phenomenon deprived them of empathy and compassion for the victims. All this called for filling the systemic gaps through a comprehensive educational program, aimed at raising the competences of the representatives of services and professions of public trust, such as policemen, doctors, teachers or the operators of emergency line 112.

We conducted our training throughout the whole country, raising the competences of policemen, teachers, doctors and issuing publications which describe the phenomenon of domestic violence and the ways of reacting.  During the trainings, the participants learnt not only what domestic violence is and how to respond to it. They also learnt, how to cope with difficult emotions and what are the consequences of domestic violence both from the perspective of the perpetrator and the victim.

We prepared also a guidebook for the health care staff. It was issued in 500 copies and given out to the persons who participated in our trainings.

Yet another task was training a group of Georgian psychologists in order to raise their competences in the area of therapy for the perpetrators. In the systemic solutions suggested by HumanDoc, we notice the necessity to help people experiencing domestic violence, the need to educate specialists and representatives of professions of public trust, but also the need to work with people who use violence. Only with such comprehensive actions can we create real changes.

In the training by HumanDoc participated psychologists who work with the perpetrators of violence on a daily basis.

The trainings are the first event of such kind addressed to the perpetrators in Georgia regarding their therapy. Until now, only psychologists working in prisons had access to such trainings.