Care for 20 homeless people in Tbilisi, Georgia

A week ago, the single mother of one of the long term residents of our shelter for homeless teenagers died. Her son's name is Bachi and she leaves him and five sisters, who had nowhere to go but to our shelter. As they are under age we will be looking to see what options the State might offer and then make a decision as to whether the girls would be better off with the option or not. If unsatisfactory, of course we will continue to care for the girls ourselves. We have started on their rehabilitation (alas the family and school/no school life they had had was extremely dysfunctional).

Thank goodness that, with the help of St Gregory's Foundation, we have our own house so that these girls have somewhere to go. Our shelter is only a family sized house, now rather overcrowded, but it is better than the streets.

So here are the residents of Mkurnali House:

• Bachi's 5 newly arrived sisters
• 4 girls, the long term residents we know
• The four girl's 5 babies we know
• 8 long term boy residents, most at work but needing to live 'at home' (ie our shelter)
• the newly released (from prison) brother of one of the long term residents
• 9 boys released in a recent government amnesty. 11 were released in total, but two were found jobs with a furniture factory and have been moved to a province by the company to work on a very large order for Batumi, the resort on the Black Sea.

Our policy to never turn teenagers away when they are in desperate need is being stretched to the limit. We are so grateful to all our supporters, both in Tbilisi and those we have never met around the world, and we trust that you will share our compassion for these newly orphaned children. Can you donate today to help us feed them?

Aged just 16, Eka* was left alone in one of the province of Georgia.  Her father left family when she was a kid. Single mother had to take care of 4 underage children; in order to survive the mother was begging in the street, one day she invited friends at home to celebrate the birthday one of her children. The party was going to finish when one of the guest, who was drug addicted, stealthily from other guest took drug.  Unfortunately, the dose of drug turned to be mortal and he died. When police came they took the mother and arrested her without proper investigation. No volunteer had been found to take care of children, they started begging and selling icons in the streets of the province.

One day, when Eka, the main character of our story, finished her working day and was going home some young man run after her, he assaulted her and intended to rape her.  For safety reason she used to carry small knife in her pocket and in order to defense herself she used the knife and wounded violator and run away.  Police caught the girl and sentenced to a suspended sentence. Once a week she had to visit probation office. One day when she visited the office, the officer locked the door and ordered her to get naked she managed to slip from his hand, opened the window and jumped. She decided to leave the province and run to Tbilisi. When she came in Tbilisi she started begging and acquainted with street children.  Once, one of the street children called to our office and asked us immediately come to their place as one girl was very ill. We went there and this was how we met Eka, we took her to the hospital and helped her to recover. When she was released from hospital we took her to our organization. After some time, the police officer called to our office and told us that they had an information about the girl and ask us to take her to police office. We immediately contacted our lawyer and together went to police station, the case was investigated again and with our assistance Eka was justified in 25 days. The girl started learning handicraft in our organization. She was taught sewing.  After some time she decided to go back to her home town. She returned there and started  working in sewing firm, she sews carpets,  soon  she met a nice fellow and got married.

Her life totally changed with our help, she is employed and happily married. 

Life on the streets is never easy.  You can help other teenagers escape this life like Eka did by helping our shelter buy food for them.  If you donate on Wednesday 12th June, GlobalGiving will add 40% to your donation so it will buy even more food for us. This applies to all donations up to $1,000 made through globalgiving.org (not the UK site) after 9am EDT (2pm in UK) until midnight EDT or when matching funds run out

* We have changed the name and don't use a photo to protect our client's anonymity.