HICD 2020 Strengthens Institution Enhancing Civic Education to Build a More Inclusive Society
The South Caucasus have a rich history of unique cultures, but in the recent past this diversity has left members of Georgia’s ethnic and religious minorities—up to 15 percent of the population—feeling discriminated against and neglected. To address these challenges, the Georgia Human and Institutional Capacity Development 2020 Activity (HICD 2020) is working with the Civic Education Teacher’s Forum (CETF) to strengthen civic education in the country and build a more inclusive society.
CETF is a professional association of civics teachers from 2,000 schools covering almost 80 percent of Georgia. CETF’s goal is to improve the quality of civic education and enhance its significance in society.
Promoting civic education and social inclusion in schools is important to preventing radicalization of minority youth groups, according to a recent Open Society Georgia Foundation study. Unchecked stereotypical attitudes can impede minority communities’ full integration, breed extremism and xenophobia, and threaten human rights and national security.
HICD 2020 helped CETF improve its financial sustainability and develop skills and knowledge for obtaining and managing financial resources received from membership fees and donors. The HICD 2020 project team worked with CETF to develop a financial manual, a fundraising strategy, and an action plan as tools for the organization to use to implement its long-term fundraising goals.
Using the new knowledge and skills gained from HICD 2020’s assistance, CETF won several grants to support its service delivery to students and civic education teachers throughout Georgia. CETF and the Center for Training and Consultancy received an European Union grant to implement the Towards a Culture of Peace Project. This is a one-year initiative that engages 1,200 pupils across four regions in Georgia in formal and extracurricular civic education activities that prevent social conflicts, discrimination, and violence as well as trains civic education teachers from 20 schools to identify the early signs of radicalization in pupils.
The Georgian Coalition–Education for All also awarded CETF a grant to help CETF create a distant learning online platform for teachers from 2,000 schools across Georgia. CETF’s efforts under these two grants will help build a more informed, inclusive, and engaged Georgian society that combats discrimination and embraces diversity.
The total HICD 2020 program benefit for CETF as of 2018 is US$35,735. The annualized return on investment for the program is 170 percent, which implies that for every U.S. dollar spent on the program, there is US$2.70 in benefit.
ME&A implements the HICD 2020 Task Order contract under USAID’s Human and Institutional Development (HICDpro) Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, which was awarded to ME&A in November 2013. ME&A is joined in this effort by two subcontractors, Chemonics and Performance Design Partners (PDP). The contract is being managed locally through the ME&A/HICD2020 office in Tbilisi, Georgia.