Goals

Problem statement:

My friends and I live in the village of Tivi, in Kvareli district. I am in the 9th grade, my friends, some of them are my classmates, some are one or two years older than me. Our village is different from many Georgian villages, because we live in a community of different religions and ethnic backgrounds. The majority of population are Avarielis, the minority are Georgians. Avaielis are Muslims, Georgians are Christians. Children from our village are less likely to participate in various programs, competitions, summer schools and so on. Also, our village is rarely visited by other villages. Therefore, rest of Georgia doesn’t know much about Avarielis. Sometimes, others may hear a gossip or a wrong story. We want to demonstrate that we too are interested in the same topics as our peers throughout Georgia and we want to introduce ourselves through our works

Proposed Solution:

During the last year, I and my classmates shot two small films. One was about bullying in the school and the otherabout early marriage. Both films were taken with our cell phones.

We shot the film about early marriage because we participated in the competition of the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development. We had to make a presentation on gender equality. In the presentation, we interviewed one of the women living in our village who lives alone and has to be a man and a woman in the family. We took this short film with our mobile phone camera. Three of us were involved, one boy and two girls. In the film we showed how father wanted his daughter to marry while she was still in school, she ran out of the wedding and committed suicide, after a while father wanted his other daughter to get married but shecalled 116 006 (advisory hotline) and fled. the father was left alone. The film is called "regret". There were seven groups participating in the competition and we got the first place.

The film about bullying was shot for the competition between schools. Our teacher helped us to take this film. Here we show how two stories can evolve: one version of the story ends with bad consequences when nobody interferes, and the second story everything changes whenthere is interference, thus everything goes well. This film won in the competition and we got the first place in our region.

Because we have taken the film only two times and we have won twice, we have decided to take more on other issues and show them in our schools and schools of our neighboring villages. We want to take four more films about the following topics: freedom of speech, coexistence of people with different religions, stereotypes, and peace building. We have gone through these topics in the training of the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, so we will be able to make films on them. Our trainers will also help us if we have questions.

Sustainability:

We hope that our films will be seen by many people on Facebook and many of them will share it. People are familiar with us and they will understand that we are interested in similar topics and understand them same way as our peers in the rest of Georgia. We also planned to show these movies in our school so that other children of our village see it and become more active. Also, we will show these films in the Akhalsofeli Youth Center, where Georgian children will see our works, get acquainted with us so we becomefriends. In the future we can do projects and movies together.

Equal gender opportunity:

We have shot two movies where girls and boys participated together. A boy also participated in the presentation on gender equality and agreed with our ideas that there is no weak gender and that early marriage should not be allowed. In all our projects we will work together with girls and boys equally.