Although she no longer lives at the shelter, Mariam* still works for its catering enterprise.
After experiencing domestic violence from her husband five years ago, Mariam* went to a women’s shelter run by the Anti-Violence Network of Georgia, with her three young children in tow.
“I did not have a job at that time, neither would I have been able to get one because I could not leave the children with anyone,” she says. “I felt very bad. However, they helped me a lot. First of all, I had a place to live. Besides that, my children and I received psychological, medical and legal counselling.”
Over the 5 months Mariam lived at the shelter, she also got involved in its social enterprise, Gemometria, which trains survivors to cook and do event catering.
“I will never forget when we prepared an order for 300 people,” says Mariam. “Now, I work every day from 8 am until 4 pm, then I pick up my 5-year-old son from kindergarten. Thanks to the income I earn from the enterprise, I can raise my children and pay the rent. … I always remember that with my work I am helping the women here. I also remember the time when other women did the same for me.”
Among Gemometria’s customers is Liberty Bank, which recently also made a financial donation to the shelter. The decision followed a Meeting on the economic rehabilitation of violence survivors organized by UN Women Georgia in March 2024, which presented key findings from Georgia’s second Violence against Women (VAW) Survey, undertaken in 2022 and published in December 2023.
Findings include that 50.1% of women aged 15–69 have experienced at least one form of violence in their lifetime – 22.9% from an intimate partner – but 38.2% remain silent, while only 11.8% seek help from police and 6.2% turn to social services such as shelters.
Liberty Bank Head of HR Nina Chikhladze during a visit from the private sector to the shelter in Tbilisi on 6 March 2024 where VAW survey data were shared. Photo: UN Women/Leli Blagonravova
“We wrote an article in our newsletter informing our staff about the donation to the shelter and asking them to stand up for victims of violence,” says Nina Chikhladze, Head of HR for Liberty Bank. “We also shared a list of goods the shelter needed. And my room was just full of baby formula, toys, medication, sanitary napkins and other things from the list. We sent two or three cars full of goods. It was fantastic that Liberty Bank decided to donate the money, but even more important was our staff’s involvement.”
Chikhladze says people didn’t speak up about violence against women in Georgia before, but the second VAW survey reveals that social norms are changing. For example, 37.2% of men and 21.4% of women surveyed believe that violence between a husband and wife is a private matter, down from 49.7% and 32.7% who held this belief, respectively, in the first 2017 VAW survey.
“And we’ve started speaking about it at the bank – loudly,” she says. “I asked my colleagues at UN Women to share data with me about domestic violence, and we made posters with that data and opened a channel where any employee can send me a confidential email if they see sexual harassment. Many colleagues didn’t even know that touching your colleague could be sexual harassment.”
A poster about sexual harassment that Liberty Bank created based on UN Women data. Poster courtesy of Liberty Bank.
Chikhladze also produced a newsletter about economic violence, shared with the bank’s 5,000 staff.
“This is just the beginning and we’ve had good feedback from our employees. They talk about it in their free time and their coffee breaks. We have very powerful men here and this information is also very important for them because we need to work with men and boys to change their minds,” she adds.
A signatory of the Women’s Empowerment Principles since 2019, Liberty Bank also runs several women’s economic empowerment programmes and has plans to donate to the shelter again at the end of the year.
“Business representatives should feel satisfaction that they are involved in a social project like this one,” says Nato Shavlakadze, Chair of the Anti-Violence Network of Georgia. “Women’s economic empowerment is very important in general, and especially when a woman is a victim of violence, has no education, no profession, no supporters. When we were founding this social enterprise, it was our goal to ensure their economic empowerment.”
Mariam is a shining example of this empowerment, as one of the 10 women who work for Gemometria, earning a living and putting any additional profits towards the expenses of the shelter. She also has plans to pursue her childhood dream of going to law school.
“I want to work on domestic violence and to have all perpetrators punished,” says Mariam. “In the meantime, I will continue to work in cooking.”
*Name changed to protect the identity of the survivor.
Written By:
Jen Ross is a Chilean-Canadian journalist with more than 20 years of experience, including 10 on staff with the UN (ECLAC, OHCHR and UN Women). She is now based in Aruba, where she has published her first fiction and poetry and consults as a writer, editor, trainer and translator for UN Women.
https://jen-ross.com/
