Women Strengthening their Families – The Story of Maia Bunturi and Nana Abuladze

Nana Abuladze and Maia Bunturi, women entrepreneurs, Akhmeta Municipality.

“There live the active and motivated women in Akhmeta. They care about the well-being of their families and are always ready to help them. Unfortunately, there are no opportunities for women living in the city and various villages of Akhmeta Municipality to support their employment, development, and empowerment.

Maia and I have a big experience in the field of baking and we always wanted to start a small business that would help us a lot in terms of income. Also, with our activity, we wanted to support other local women as well. So, we arranged space in the house for running the business. Besides baking, we have a lot of other things to do, including family care, agriculture, etc. Therefore, we did not have enough time to increase production and offer our service to more customers. Fortunately, we participated in the new initiative of UN Women and Kakheti Regional Development Foundation (KRDF) and purchased the appropriate equipment for the bakery. With the help of the project, our labor has become much easier and at the same time, we can save time for other activities. We always take into account the wishes of the customers and offer them new, natural, and various choices: different types of baked products, dishes, salads, cakes, etc. We mainly receive orders from individuals and organizations as well. When we have many orders, we employ several local women. During the pandemic, we were in a difficult situation at the beginning but soon we were able to adapt and started selling our products remotely. Also, we offer free delivery service to the customers.

In the future, we want to expand our business and arrange the yard for various small events, mainly for children to have entertaining space. We hope our baking business will develop successfully and when the pandemic ends, we will be able to implement our plans.

It is important for a woman to be strong and independent to be able to fulfill her desires and take care of the well-being of the family. With the help of the Women's Economic Empowerment project, the living conditions for women in Akhmeta have changed for the better and they have been allowed to develop their businesses and employ other locals as well.

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).