FLEX Alumni Celebrate Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) 2008 in Gori

Since two GYSD projects that received funding from the US Department of State were closely related to environmental protection and the location for both of them was Gori, Tornike Zurabashvili ’07 and Ana Kurdghelashvili ‘07 decided to integrate their clean-up and tree-planting projects and hold the joint activity on April, 19 in Gori.

Akhalbaghi Park clean-up and tree planting activities were organized in cooperation with Gori local government and the “We the Greens NGO”.  The events headed by about 25 FLEX alumni took place on Sunday, April 19.  FLEX alumni tried their best to recruit as many volunteers as possible. The project was registered on the web-site www.gysd.net.  Around 70 volunteers from Tbilisi and Gori attended the community service project and took part in Global YouthService Day in Gori.  The project is significant for the localcommunity as most of the volunteers were fromGoriand they became acquainted with and took part in such global event forthe first time in their lives.  It needs to be noted that this year’s three FLEX Program finalists from Gori took part in the clean-up and tree planting activities on April 19.  One of them, Avtandil Abashishvili stated: “It isour shame we have never thought of cleaning this park by ourselves before.  It is amazing how much fun and positive can this kind of activities be at the same time!”

Upon completing the activity, FLEX alumni together with local volunteers went sightseeing and visited Uplistsikhe, and ancient Georgian cave city. Thus the project also turned into a rewarding cultural event.