Dear brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues:
We
send you our greetings from the Republic of Georgia from the Tbilisi YMCA. We
are contacting you for both informing others unaware of our work about our operation
in the former Soviet Republic, and to request assistance. We are seeking international
volunteers for helping our ongoing projects, and we are seeking assistance in
acquiring our own building.
For the last few years we have been very active making the most of what our friends abroad and here have contributed to us. We thank many of you that sent us books and literature in forming our YMCA library, and other assistance greatly appreciated by both us and those in the community that have richly benefited from you support. At this time we feel our services and programs, and the success of the work of the YMCA have caused us to out grow the small space we have been renting. The needs of Georgia and the work we done to reach out to the community still remain a major challenge for us, and we feel we should expand our work. This would require both assistance from concerned individual volunteers and financial support.
We
would like to ask you if you or contacts you know could help us to work with
us in achieving our goals. We would request help in obtaining our own building
for the purpose of expanding programs and community services similar to other
programs in many other international YMCA’s. We also hope to become more
self-sufficient in possessing our own building, as we still continue to rent
the rooms that house many of our community related activities and programs.
In starting our library program we have received considerable help from fellow members in the international YMCA community. Our library has been growing considerably and many people have benefited and utilize the library on a regular bases, although our free space for books have largely diminished.
One
of our main objectives is to obtain a building for housing our library, which
has out grown our rented rooms. We would also like to create a small mini-gym
for the community, and develop other aspects of creating an international hostel
to both accommodate international volunteers helping us here, and to service
Georgian and international students studying in numerous universities in the
Tbilisi area.
We would also like to have free rooms to help other community groups to have a location to conduct community related educational and cultural projects.
We also have many other ideas we would like to incorporate that require having a building in Tbilisi, and we would also be open to new ideas that others of you are implementing at your YMCA and community centers.
Our
activities so far have been growing at enormous rate and you can visit our website
to see the programs we have been involved with: www.tbilisiymca.ge
Since the
velvet revolution that ended President Shevardnadze’s rule over Georgia
in November 2003, we are hopeful that changes may take place to make our work
here easier through changing archaic remnants of soviet government policy, and
with making further social programs more accessible to the community. We are
also hopeful that this may be the right time to try to acquire and secure property
and a building that can serve the YMCA here for future generations.
If there is anyway you can help us we would appreciate any help in moving toward
our goals for the future. We thank you for your support in helping our YMCA
operation to exist and grow over the years.
Wishing you a very happy, healthy, and successful New Year.
With Best Wishes,
Tengiz Gogotishvili
Chairperson
Tbilisi YMCA
36a, Paliashvili Street,
0179, Tbilisi
Republic of Georgia
Phone: +995 32 251347
Fax: +995 32 250893
Email: info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: www.tbilisiymca.ge
| |