Apart from its threat to public health, the COVID-19 pandemic in the South Caucasus led to closures and lockdowns that increased isolation and separation in an already fragmented region. The closure of the crossings between Georgia and Abkhazia meant that even less contact between communities across the border was possible. All the while, the sense of an international emergency encouraged activism to focus on its own needs at the expense of broader outreach.
This project aimed to support civil society organisations in Georgia and inside Abkhazia to help schools in isolated communities with the restart of in-school education, while building local resilience mechanisms. The project also aimed to connect these local resilience mechanisms with one another to build solidarity and to maintain connections between communities at the same time as meeting local needs.
The project improved physical infrastructure to cope with the pandemic, helped deliver public health information from the government, and connected schools to other bodies and institutions that can act as coping mechanisms, including with one another.
This project was implemented by Peaceful Change initiative in partnership with:
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