Challenges

I am Keti Tsilosani, I live in Lanchkhuti. I have two kids. I got married very early, I was 15 years old, and as is often the case, my husband and I soon got divorced. I was home for years from the day I got married. I had neither the opportunity to study nor to work, I was completely cut off from society. My main activity was raising children and doing household chores. I soon realized that I could not endure this for long because this way of life was not internally mine. I have been accustomed to a very active social life since childhood and I could not get used to such a daily life. On the other hand, I was brought up very stereotypically and these stereotypes forced me to make concessions because it was a given and my life was like that, I had no other life then.

Such compromises have shaken my health significantly. I also had mental health problems. Only then did my family decide that I should go back to them and they took me for treatment.

It was a very difficult first period getting out of a crisis situation when I started looking for a job. I was without a diploma and a high school certificate. There were vacancies, of course, but I could not get employed anywhere. This period coincided with other hardships, my mother lost her job and the whole family was left to hope for the grandmother's pension. I was forced to go to Tbilisi and work as a waitress. I was facing a lot of difficulties there as well, but I was trying to cope with everything.

Just when I felt a little bit of progress for a while, became financially stronger, and was already supporting my family, I got badly injured in a car accident and fell in need of a six-month course of treatment. Again things got very complicated, the isolation turned into depression.

First steps

At that time, with the UN Women project "Women’s Economic Empowerment" Taso Foundation entered Guria. I was told that they were looking for women and girls to be given the education they needed and to help and empower them.

I remember the women entrepreneurs came to the first meeting, most of them were educated and successful women. We sat in a circle and Mrs. Marina Tabukashvili was asking us questions. Introducing myself, my queuing put me in an awkward position; It was a bad feeling, I had nothing to say about my achievements after these women. I will never forget Marina Tabukashvili's eyes when I said that I am a housewife and a mother of two.

Later, when I got to know Marina Tabukashvili well, I realized what her look meant. I realized that it was not the regalia listed there that were valuable to her, but I was the one whom she was looking for to raise and she and her team members did so.

That's how I became a Community Worker for the Lanchkhuti women group. At first I did not even know the meaning of this term. I would have been 24-25 years old when I went for trainings to Tbilisi as part of the educational component of the project. There I went through training programs with community workers from other regions. That was the first time I touched the computer, because I had no opportunity to do it before. I learned office software, I learned the functions of sending and receiving mail, writing cover letters, writing CVs and most importantly, the knowledge I was gaining I had to spread in my community and everything I was learning I had to teach other women.

Changes

I worked on this project for three years. I watched myself becoming a completely different person. If earlier when I passed the City Hall building I thought that there was an inaccessible space behind its doors where I could never get in, but today all the doors of this building are open to me. For myself or for someone else, I can go into every office and bring any problematic issue for solving.

Rights training has also given me a lot. There have been many times that I cried, when coming back from training I realized that I had been a victim of almost all kinds of violence since childhood and I kept quiet about all this because I knew nothing about my own rights.

I have learned so many things that I really want every girl to know. I want no one to become a victim of violence anymore. This desire grew in me so much that I set up a youth club in Lanchkhuti, where young people gather and talk about various important issues, we have trainings and thematic games.

After the project was over, I decided to open a social café, a place where locals would gather. Such a space did not exist in Lanchkhuti before. As a result of this activity, today everyone knows me, numerous articles have been written and my success story as an entrepreneurial woman has become widely spread.

I often compare my past and present CVs to each other. The first one says only three things - "Keti Tsilosani, ten grade education, a housewife", but today I can not place everything, all the trainings and all the projects I have been working on since Taso Foundation appeared in my life. Thank you and thanks to UN Women. And special personal thanks to two people - Marina Tabukashvili and Ketevan Zhordania.