The second round of the series of simultaneous clean-ups, conducted jointly by pupils, teachers, partner organizations and the environmental charity Sadagi, took place on November 16-18. This time, the USAID Civic Education Program contributed greatly to the series as a partner.
To our delight, 170 schools expressed their interest to participate in this stage of clean-ups. Due to logistical and financial issues, however, we could select only 39 schools in 11 municipalities of the Mtskheta-Mtianeti, Shida Kartli and Samtskhe-Javakheti regions to visit. A total of 1010 students and their teachers took part in the second stage of simultaneous clean-ups. Other interested schools are invited to take part in future cleanups (and we believe the number of applicants will increase significantly!).
In parallel with supporting the organization of the cleanup events, we came up with a name for them- “I Clean Up Georgia”. Ivane Khaindrava, a student of the 21st public school of Tbilisi, suggested the motto to us in October. We immediately made trial stickers, which were distributed to the pupils of the 55th public school in Tbilisi. After their approval, we gave these stickers to all participants of the second stage as a thank you.
The children seem to enjoy cleaning up their homeland; the grown-ups, too. We are happy to have adopted ‘I Clean Up Georgia’ as the name of the simultaneous clean-up events together with pupils and teachers.
Due to the large number of participating schools, we are able to tell you about only a few of the recent teams. We’ll start with Khovle in Kaspi municipality. This is Ivane Javakhishvili’s birth village and we especially wanted to visit. We had had to postpone from November 16th to November 23rd for logistical reasons, but all the while it was getting colder, so much so, in fact, that we decided to postpone until next year for the pupils’ comfort. On the morning of the 23rd, then, we weren’t even thinking about the Khovle clean-up. And yet, early in the morning, the pupils of the school themselves called us on their teacher Lali Bakhtadze’s phone and begged us to visit them. “We are here, the sun came out, and we want to clean up with you,” they said. So we did.
The 30 children and their teacher Lali welcomed us with great enthusiasm to their beautiful school, yard and well equipped basketball hall in an old building. All participants challenged themselves in their work and had a lot of fun too. We had an interesting conversation with them at the picnic held afterwards. The pupils of Khovle demonstrated excellent character, and it was a great pleasure to visit them.
The village of Mokhisi in the Kareli municipality is the home village of the ancestors of renowned writer Dato Turashvili. His “King of Forests” is popular with the children of Mokhisi. On November 14, they celebrated Astrid Lindgren’s 116th birthday. The pupils said they really enjoy the books of this great children’s writer, and some of them even had it with them at the cleanup event, as they had been reading on the way to school. Unfortunately, as the Mokhisi school building is damaged, the children have been studying in the school of the neighboring village of Ptsa, half an hour away, for the last two years.
Teacher Ia Lursmanashvili was the organizer of the clean-up with us. She works tirelessly to instill a love of history and citizenship in her students from Mokhisi. The pupils told us they love kings Davit Agmashenebeli and Tamar best from Georgia’s historical characters. Vakhtang Gorgasali was also mentioned, as was their respect for Ilia Chavchavadze from the more recent past.
Later, elementary school teacher Maya Grigalashvili joined us. It was clear that the 24 children who had gathered to tidy up the territory of the Mokhisi school love both teachers equally, and work hard to study well in their classes.
Variani, a village in the Gori municipality, is the birthplace of Jacob Gogebashvili, and the school here is named after him. Twenty children took part in the clean-up event, under the guidance of teacher Maia Balakhadze. Maia teaches children the essence of Georgian citizenship and, thus, pride. Together with the pupils from Variani, children from the neighboring Arashenda village joined in the cleaning-up of this historical village of Shida Kartli.
In and around Variani, there are many beautiful alleys of poplar trees, which are nicely yellowed and made that sunny November day all the more pleasant. The school building is handsome and well-maintained. The only small detail that was not to our liking was the plastic door and window protection tape that vividly impacted the otherwise tidy interior of the school building. It would be good if our builders and repairmen made it a rule to remove these tapes after completing their works and thereby contribute to the aesthetic formation of the pupils. We left Variani with a feeling of joy, however – it was delightful to see the pleasantly tired pupils at the picnic and the surrounds of the school, the playground for children and the water canal they had so carefully cleaned up.
The third public school of Tserovani was founded in 2008. Children studying in this school had become IDPs as a result of the Russian military aggression, their families forced to leave their homes in Akhalgori municipality and settle in new homes in Tserovani. When the children first arrived, it was eseentially empty ground surrounding the building. Together, they began to take care of, clean, and decorate the area around the school with plants. Before our campaign, they had already made it a tradition to organize a clean-up event every semester, and to encourage others to participate in such initiatives and so become role models for others.
Old Kanda village is full of interesting stories. Assyrians populate the village, and some of the buildings built by German colonists are still preserved. As we approached the school area, we saw the late autumn nature colored by the creations made by the children: Around the school, 116 years ago, a pine forest and an alley of other trees were planted. These are trimmed at the end of autumn, and from the huge pieces of wood, the children had made beautiful chairs, which were placed in a large circle around a table.
The pupils are diligent in taking care of their village, especially the school yard and its surrounding area. At the entrance to the school, they cleaned the clogged canals using tools, while the junior high school students cleaned the school yard from even the tiniest particles of waste.
The old walls in the schoolyard had been painted by one of the pupils: illustrations showing time-travelers from Old Kanda visiting New Kanda. Inside, the corridors of the school were decorated with interesting hand-made presentations. Our attention was also drawn to the chemistry and physics laboratories, which showed more evidence of the children’s diligent work. The pupils of Kanda have diverse aspirations. At the same time, everyone agrees that every piece of waste we throw into nature takes us one step back from success.
Sashaburo public school, in Dusheti municipality, had a small building, but the hearts of its pupils were huge! The teachers and the children here are warm and friendly. Many of them come to this school every day from neighboring villages Bagi, Chanadiri, Nagliant Kari, Lazviaani, and another Samachablo IDP settlement.
31 students and six teachers were involved in tidying up the beautiful surroundings of Sashaburo school, under the leadership of civics education teacher Shorena Bregvadze. Along with being active in tidying up, the children also presented us with beautiful and cleverly designed posters. It was nice to talk to the teachers here. In addition to their own building, they also take care of the historic school building next to it and are waiting for it to be repaired. We also commemorated the American writer and sculptor Giorgi Papashvili, who was born and grew up in the neighboring Kobiant Kari village.
50 students of the Second Public School of Mtskheta were involved in cleaning up their school grounds and the nearby stadium, under the leadership of civics education teacher Maya Gelashvili. It was a pleasant setting near the Oko Principality Church, which is overlooked by the Monastery of the Cross. Twice as many children than initially planned came out to participate in the clean-up event. Because of this, there weren’t enough gloves, but the pupils shared out what they had and worked with one glove each. The children of Mtskheta then showed pleasant courage in expressing their opinions when recording interviews.
When we arrived at School No3 of Akhaltsikhe, the 17 schoolgirls there had already tidied up the school grounds. We saw the pupils and the coordinator Rusudan having a picnic in a nicely painted school canteen. The students of this Armenian-language school in Akhaltsikhe were humble and polite, and said they liked Queen (King) Tamar most among the historic characters of Georgia.
The school of Arali village of Adigeni municipality is situated in a beautiful environment and the yard is decorated with flowers. When we arrived, the hard working and virtuous students and teachers had already finished cleaning and were working in the flower garden. About twenty children were involved in tidying up the school grounds under the leadership of teacher Esther and the school director Maro.
Visiting Didi Smada school in Adigeni municipality was a joy for us, where we were greeted by more than thirty students cleaning up around the beautiful yard under the leadership of their teacher Tinatin. It was a pleasure to talk with these children – to feel their politeness and eagerness to learn and work. The girls’ football team from Didi Smada was successful throughout last year in many competitions. The Smada students also warmed our spirits further by telling us of their love of reading books.
Some pupils travel from neighboring villages to study here. This highland village is surrounded by beautiful mountains, and its roads are lined with pine and poplar trees that fight to survive mistletoe and disease. The approach of winter can be felt in high-mountainous Samtskhe – the forested slopes of the mountains are already covered in snow.
We would like to remind our readers that this initiative was started in October on the initiative of Sadagi, the National Teacher Award Team, and leading teacher nominees of the award. We will continue annually with some 5 to 7 rounds. At the first stage of the series, cleanups were held in 11 municipalities of Georgia, with 1027 students from 24 schools and their teachers taking part.
‘I Clean-up Georgia’ has several sponsors. Procredit Bank Georgia is the Platinum Sponsor; Golden Sponsors are: Diplomat-Georgia and Palitra L; Silver sponsors are Nikora, Financial Bureau and Elite Electronics. The number of sponsors is increasing, which will enable the maximum number of schools to participate in the clean-up events.
The simultaneous clean-up events will continue next year. The next stage will be held in April 2024 and at least two more rounds will follow, with the final scheduled for June 5. We expect the participation of hundreds of schools from all municipalities of Georgia in the final stage. Follow us on facebook.com/sadagi.official.
By The Sadagi Team
