Women Strengthening their Families and Communities – Mziana’s Story

"Tandzia is a village inhabited by eco-migrants, where I have been living with my family for 33 years. Although its geographical location is different from Svaneti, it has not been difficult for me to adapt to it. The women living in Tandzia mostly are working as teachers. Unfortunately, the village was not very active, so we had monotonous lives.  We always wanted to leave our homes and start a business that would provide us with personal development as well as economic benefits.

In recent years, as I mentioned, there have been almost no activities in our village that have contributed to the development of women and the community in general. The new initiative of the UN Women and the Taso Foundation made us very happy and gave us hope for a better future. With its help, we, the women living in the village, became more active and acquired a lot of useful skills, which in the future will help us to achieve all our goals independently. As part of the initiative, I also participated in a grant competition and opened a bakery in the village with other women from my community: Zoya Tserediani, Keto Gulbani, Nora Girgvliani, and Tamar Khitsishvili. We have been involved in this activity for four months now and we try to offer our customers delicious, bread “Lavash” and “Lazuri” made of natural rural products. There is no other bakery in Tandzia and the surrounding villages, so our business has been developed successfully and we have employed other two women from our community: Izolda Ansiani, a community worker of Bolnisi Municipality, and Meri Kvirsiani who took accounting courses with the same initiative and now she works in our bakery as an accountant. Also, we hired a young guy from our community to help us in the transportation of firewood. We are always focused on customer satisfaction, so along with bread, we also bake delicious “Khachapuri” and “Kubdari” made from natural products on demand.

With the help of the initiative, the women living in our village have become more self-confident and motivated, which makes me very happy. I think it is important for a woman to have the ability to think individually and always be able to freely express her points of view. In the future, we are thinking about expanding our business and we believe that we will achieve more success together.

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).