Saba Khergiani, a Tbilisi-based expert in business and organisation development, knows the challenges of growing up in a remote mountain village in Georgia well. Born and raised in Svaneti in northwest Georgia, Saba says he felt the lack of opportunities in his youth, “Your family may be doing well financially, but there is just nothing outside of standard school curriculum for young people.” Determined to change that for others, Saba has spent the past decade creating opportunities to help young people improve their lives.
As a teenager, Saba embraced the digital world as a gateway to self-development, “a way to navigate the world without leaving my village”. But he didn’t stop there.
Driven by a simple idea “If I have these needs, there are surely more people in the same situation”, Saba, still a high school student in 2014, created the Zogadi Unarebi Facebook group to help other school graduates prepare for university entrance exams, in particular, for a mandatory “general skills” exam, something that had not been taught in schools at that time. The online community grew to almost 5,400 members and had been active for a decade.
As a Business Administration student at Tbilisi State University, Saba continued exploring self-development opportunities – and sharing them with others. In 2017 he co-founded a student union TSUholic.ge, where he coordinated education programmes and activities until graduation.
Today Saba is still actively involved in formal and non-formal education, majoring in two areas, Management and Digital Literacy. He is a guest lecturer at several Georgian universities, including the University of Georgia, Caucasus University, and GIPA. Saba also worked as a facilitator and trainer with local and international organisations and projects, including Erasmus+, the United Nations Association of Georgia and the Open Society Foundation of Georgia.
European Union’s EaP Civil Society Fellowship programme gave Saba a chance to leverage his passion for creating opportunities for young Georgians from remote regions with his digital competencies and experience in training and facilitation. His “Empowering Future Leaders in the Digital Era” project helped over 100 young people — youth leaders, local activists, and students across five regions of Georgia — enhance their digital literacy and leadership skills and gain knowledge of digital trends and professions. “The digital world is full of opportunities, but also of threats. Young people need guidance, someone to make them aware of opportunities and dangers.”
Like all capacity building he delivers, Saba tried to make all sessions within his fellowship project extremely practical and oriented to the needs of his participants. “I try to bring a pragmatic approach from my business consulting work into my civic activism,” explains Saba. “I believe knowledge must be practical, so I always try to equip participants with practical tools so they can use them when they leave a training or lecture.”
Saba used the same ‘ready-to-apply’ approach for the leadership module of the programme. As a proactive person who firmly believes in “taking matters into your own hands”, Saba encouraged participants to explore what kind of leaders they could and wanted to be in the digital world.
“I wanted them to see that there is always something they can do. Everyone must be a leader, even if they will be leading only themselves. I wanted to build in them the sense of ownership and responsibility because everything is in their hands and everything is their choice.”
Within his fellowship project, Saba worked closely with local organisations, like Ozurgeti Independent Living Center in Guria. He was deeply inspired by the energy, motivation and spark of the three young women leading the Centre’s efforts to support people with disabilities across the region. His project helped to establish a collaborative network of 10 youth-led organisations to foster the implementation of digital tools for community development and civic engagement initiatives; however, today Saba is worried about the future of these local organisations that are struggling to survive and continue to serve their communities.
Despite the challenging times for Georgian civil society, Saba is confident his fellowship project will have a long-lasting impact. His confidence is based on the participants’ feedback who often mentioned they realized how many things they could do and that it was their choice to act when they did not like something. “I hope I gave them the inspiration to do something and made them understand that whatever they are not changing they are choosing,” concludes Saba. “It’s a change of the mindset, but it makes one’s horizon much wider.”
Find other Featured Stories of our EaP Civil Society Fellows here.
Background information:
Saba Khergiani is one of the Fellows of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Fellowship programme funded by the European Union. Its main objective is to support civil society activists or civically minded people from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine who demonstrate a deep commitment to leading positive social change in their communities. The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Fellowship programme has been running since 2017 and today the Fellowship alumni has over 200 Fellows from across the six countries of the Eastern Partnership. Details about the Fellows and their Fellowship projects can be found here.
