Women supporting the Ethnic Minorities – Leila's Story

Leila Balashvili is an active entrepreneur from the village of Ruispiri in Telavi Municipality. For the last two years, Leila had worked in a kindergarten in the city of Telavi and always tried to give the children a proper education but left her job as she changed the residence. Currently, she is involved in organic agriculture in Ruispiri and is focused on business development and knowledge sharing.

Telavi municipality is inhabited by ethnic Azerbaijanis. Most of them do not speak the Georgian language. Leila always wanted rural people to learn Georgian to improve their knowledge and potential. “Working with an ethnic group was very interesting for me. The language barrier is an essential problem for them and I always try to explain to the residents why knowledge of the state language is necessary”. While working in the kindergarten, Leila spoke to the children in Georgian, read fairy tales and poems in Georgian, and then asked them to share this information with their families.

In addition, Leila was always interested in agriculture activities and decided to develop her own farm. She loves agriculture very much and has serious plans for the future. With the help of the new initiative of UN Women and Kakheti Regional Development Foundation (KRDF) she was able to arrange the irrigation system and started agricultural activities with more motivation. Leila is focused on organic culture and tries to share her knowledge and experience with others. “I want to have such crops that will be interesting for others, especially the city dwellers. For this, I plan to offer school and kindergarten representatives to invite children and adults to my home, so that I can teach them everything I know about organic agriculture”. Leila offers a variety of choices to her customers: potatoes, grapes of Saferavi variety, cucumbers, tomatoes, various herbs and beans, carrots, beets, ginger, and more. She sells the harvest in Telavi agro market. Her products are natural and very useful. Customers are also always satisfied with her service.

Leila believes the role of a woman is very important for the development of the family and community. “The role of woman in the family decision-making process is necessary and important. First of all, a woman must be educated to be able to follow her choices and be happy."

Leila has interesting plans for the future. Along with agriculture, she also wants to be involved in livestock. In addition, she continues to help the community, share the knowledge and experience with everyone to motivate them to become ambitious and develop.

The project “Women’s Economic Empowerment project through Social Mobilization and Capacity Building” is part of the UN Women’s regional project “Women’s Economic Empowerment in the South Caucasus”, supported by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC). The project “Women’s Economic Empowerment project through Social Mobilization and Capacity Building” is implemented by Kakheti Regional Development Foundation (KRDF), Taso Foundation (TF), and CARE Caucasus (CARE).