Women Supporting Women – Mzekala’s Story

Mzekala Surmanidze, woman entrepreneur, Khertvisi village in Aspindza municipality.

"Although the village of Khertvisi is located in a rather tourist zone, the local population here is not active at all. Our main activities are agriculture and family care. Besides, there are almost no activities implemented in the village that promote the development of women. I always wanted to have an active life, run my own business and help other women in my community.

Fortunately, I heard about the new initiative of UN Women and Taso Foundation and I became very interested as Apindza was one of the target municipalities of the project. It gave me hope that women in my community would be empowered both personally and economically. At first, it was very difficult to unite the women living in Khertvisi in this project, I tried to explain to each of them the advantages of the project and its benefits. I would also like to highlight the role of men, who had a negative effect on women's involvement as they were looking at the project with no hope and did not allow women to participate in it. As a result of hard work, finally, 6 women came together and became actively involved in the ongoing processes of the project. Later, as part of the project, I also became an assistant of our community worker and I try my best to help women in my community become more active and successful. I also participated in a grant competition, bought 25 rabbits, and started my own business, which is developing quite successfully. Now I have 70 rabbits and I take care of them as much as possible. I feed my rabbits with the natural food and therefore, the demand for them is huge. I also wanted to collaborate with restaurants, but the pandemic prevented me from implemented this idea. Despite the Covid-19 virus, I can still sell rabbits and offer free delivery service to my customers. As a result of the Women’s Economic Empowerment project, many significant positive changes have been implemented in our village. The women participants of the project became more active, empowered and self-confident. What is more important, their success has become a good example for other women from the village. In addition, men's attitudes toward women's activism have changed positively. I am very happy when we are actively involved in the decision-making processes on important rural issues and boldly express our points of view.

In the future, I think about the development of my business. I already have offers from several restaurant representatives and plan to collaborate with them. As I expand my business, I also want to help other women in my community. So I am going to give a few of my rabbits to them for the opportunity to start their own business and have their income. Feeding the rabbits costs very expensive to me as I use natural food. Therefore, for the development of my activities, I need additional finances most of all to buy natural food for them.

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).