Volunteering and Community Engagement

On October 23, Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University hosted a meeting on “Volunteering and Community Engagement.” It was led by Shorena Parunashvili, the University’s International Relations Manager and Head of the Community Engagement Center, and Mindia Tavkhelidze, Community and Volunteerism Development Program Manager at Caritas Georgia.

At the start of the meeting, Shorena Parunashvili gave the students an overview of the Erasmus+ KA2 institutional development project “Enhancing Capacities for Sustainable Community Engagement: Case of Georgia and Sierra Leone.” Under this project, the university has already piloted the integration of a volunteering activity into a course, and it plans to support similar initiatives in the future. The aim of the meeting was to introduce students to volunteering and to inform them about opportunities to take part in volunteer programs.

Mindia Tavkhelidze of Caritas Georgia presented the organization’s work and all the volunteer programs it has run for years: child and youth development and protection, social protection, healthcare migration, strengthening education, and more. He spoke in detail about the opportunities open to SabaUni students.

The meeting also covered cooperation between Caritas Georgia and Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University in supporting students’ volunteer initiatives and integrating them into the curriculum.

The meeting was interactive and ended with a Q&A session.

Caritas Georgia is a non-governmental organization, part of a network operating in many countries, that aims to assist people with disabilities and socio-economically disadvantaged citizens. It has worked in Georgia for more than 30 years and was founded by the Catholic Church.