Struggling with poverty
The first thing that comes to your mind when you enter the tiny seven square meter dark room with muddy floors and a plastic ceiling, with only two small beds inside, is how can a family with five children fit into this room; call this home? Mamuka Turmanidze, the head of family explains that three children sleep on one bed, the other two on the second bed and he with his wife lies on the floor. “When it rains outside, it rains in our room,” he says. “[The] children have to sit on the beds and they even don’t have the space to move.”
For more than 10 years, these are the conditions this family has been facing. There is no place to cook inside. Just outside the door there is a gas stove where Ketevan, Mamuka’s wife, prepares food for the family. “Sitting by the TV is the best entertainment for them, but we can afford switching on the TV only in the evening for a few hours in order not to pay much for the electricity,” says Mamuka.
Over 23 per cent of Georgian kids are living in and suffering from poverty. It infects every aspect of their lives, from family relations, to school friendships, and even their ability dream for the future. Tamar, 11, is the first child in the family. She confesses that sometimes children laugh at her as she is not well dressed. And, for this reason, she prefers sitting home and taking care of her sisters and brothers together with her mom.
“I was raised in an orphanage and I know how difficult it is to live without family,” says Ketevan, 33. “I will do my best to live with my children,” she says. There were days when family had nothing to eat. They suffered from the constant struggle to make ends meet. The government allowance of $140 was the only income for the family when World Vision began working with them.
After the approach of state social worker, World Vision Day care Services for Socially Vulnerable Infants/Toddlers project began evaluating the needs of the family. “Our main purpose was to create the stabile income for the family,” explains Marina Menteshashvili, the project manager. “They had [a] very poor economic situation.” The project began to equip Mamuka with small business development skills to be better able to provide for his family’s needs. At the same time, the emergency services component provided food and hygiene supplies for the family’s youngest member, 9-month-old, Nika.
“I cannot explain what [this meant] for us,” says Ketevan. “I could not breastfeed him anymore. Because of lack of food [for myself], I did not have milk. I was giving him the bread and tea and he was crying all the time. Without World Vision’s assistance I do not know what I would have done.”
For long-term sustainability, World Vision supported Mamuka with agricultural products and rented him a small place in the market to help facilitate income generation. “ It was a big encouragement for me,” he says. “My family’s poor conditions and the trust from this organization did not allow me to be unsuccessful. Thanks to God, from this business I can feed my family now,” he says.
This initial support to start his small business was all Mamuka needed to succeed. After his endeavours in the market, Mamuka, together with his friend, rented a car and began purchasing products in rural areas and selling them in the Tbilisi market. Thanks to his entrepreneurial activities, his family’s income has more than doubled, do 500 Gel ($300) a month.
The lack of food, which was the huge dilemma for the family, is now resolved. Mamuka and Ketevan do not have to worry what to eat and their children no longer go to bed hungry. But, there is still a lot of work to be done. Their living conditions are still dismal and they lack warm clothes and money for proper health care.
“This is a big family and the need is huge,” say Mamuka. He is hopful that through his hard work and with the support from the government, his family’s dream to have their own house can come true and is grateful for the assistance he has received because he knows that without their assistance their dreams would never even be close to coming true.