Humanitarian assistance programme in Georgia 1999 : final report

Results in the five program areas are as follows: (1) The two community development projects, one in East Georgia and one in West Georgia, focused on creating community rooms to encourage social interaction, providing skills training, providing loan assistance to sound business plans, and developing kitchen gardens to provide supplemental nutrition to IDP families. The training courses, combined with the loan assistance and the kitchen gardens, directly helped over 19,000 IDPs become less dependent of humanitarian assistance. (2) The rehabilitation project addressed the most pressing shelter needs of the IDP population in collective centers in the Samegrelo region and extended its work to meet needs arising from the influx of IDPs from the Gali region at the end of May 1998. A total of 55 collective centers housing about 3,200 people were refurbished to meet the Sphere Project minimum standards of accommodation (watertight roofing, full glazing of living and interior spaces, suitable water and sanitation facilities, no electrical hazards). In multifamily living spaces, partitions between families and privacy for sleeping areas were created. More than 100 IDPs were employed in the rehabilitation, and agreements were drawn up to delegate responsibility among the interested parties. However, since a recent survey suggests that rehabilitated collective centers tend to degrade rather quickly or disappear, future efforts will focus more on engendering a sense of communal ownership than on physical rehabilitation. (3) The home care project provided assistance for a 1-year period to the most vulnerable IDPs accommodated in collective centers in the Samegrelo region in conjunction with assistance provided by other agencies, including the Georgian Red Cross Society (GRCS). In total, 5,000 of the most vulnerable IDPs received basic health and social assistance from 100 nurses and social assistants working in the GRCS" Visiting Nurse Program over a 6-month period. Due to delays in procurement, the equivalent of 12 monthly food parcel distributions were made in about 6 months; more realistic implementation schedules will be created to make this project run more consistently. A recent survey of the nutritional intake of the elderly living alone (including GRCS home care beneficiaries) will improve evaluation of future food assistance needs. (4) The food assistance component provided 15 institutions (mainly psychiatric institutions and orphanages) accommodating approximately 1,500 patients two rounds of food distribution and one round of hygiene articles distribution over a 6-month period. It also provided seed, fertilizer, agricultural instruments, and training to make the institutions more self-sufficient. Due to procurement delays, the continuous impact assessment was incomplete, so it is not known whether the inputs were well used or how many patients benefitted. The Federation will not continue this project in the future. The World Food Program, which has been providing this kind of assistance on a much wider scale, has agreed to include the 15 institutions in its program. (5)A vulnerability and capacity assessment (VCA) was conducted to increase awareness of patterns of vulnerability within Georgia and to examine how and whether individuals and communities are able to cope with risks that confront them. Specifically, the GRCS, with the Federation, conducted surveys on vulnerability in the Djvari area, on the food intake of the elderly living alone, and on the conditions of the IDP collective centers; these exercises gave the GRCS a better understanding of vulnerability assessment. A central task was to formulate a survey of surveys, including the results from the household and other vulnerability surveys that were available at the end of 1999. The collection of secondary data was a useful tool for learning how to perform an efficient VCA.