Georgia can be considered a fragile democracy precisely because of its frozen conflicts with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. As a result, there is a high number of internally displaced persons (IDPs), and significant funds for their assistance and support are allocated to this country through the Eastern Partnership's package of development aid, that is, EU cooperation and other donors. Thanks also to the Czech Development Agency (ČRA) and Slovak SAMRS, beneficial projects are being implemented there. A group of students from the Department of Development and Environmental Studies in Olomouc visited some of them in person. Thanks to support from the Czech Development Agency, they visited governmental, non-governmental and para-governmental institutions in the capital, as well as local initiatives and specific aid recipients in rural areas.

Young people from Palacký University were interested in the process of building civil society in Georgia after the 2008 war, its chances of entering the EU, media freedom and the level of corruption, support for internally displaced people, social entrepreneurship, and agricultural activities within small cooperatives in this country. They spent a whole day, for example, on employment-increase projects run by Charity ČR in the Tusheti region and also on agricultural projects of the organisation Člověk v tísni in the Terjola district.

The field excursion, as well as the project itself in the field of global development education, is co-financed from the funds of the Czech Development Agency (ČRA).

Text and Photo: Department of Development and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University in Olomouc

A field excursion to Georgia was co-financed by the Czech Development Agency (ČRA) within the project of the Department of Development and Environmental Studies (KRES) at the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University in Olomouc, under the name “Development Cooperation With One’s Own Eyes”.