October 8, 2021, Tbilisi – On October 8, the EU-supported Caucasus Social Innovation Grant Competition award ceremony took place at Rooms Hotel Tbilisi.
The event was opened by Nino Samvelidze, Youth Programme Manager at the Delegation of the European Union to Georgia. Followed by Nana Janashia, CENN Executive Director; Iza Bekauri, KRDF Director and Nune Sarukhanyan, President of Green Lane NGO in Armenia.
“The green and social component is very important for the European Union. I had the opportunity to talk to some of the winning entrepreneurs and I’m very happy that with our help, these young entrepreneurs have been able to achieve their goals. The main priorities of this EU program are to ensure the employment of young people, to develop their entrepreneurial skills and reach the most vulnerable groups. And I can confidently say that this project implemented by CENN fully covers all three of these priorities. I would like to congratulate all the winners of this grant competition and wish them success in their future endeavours,” said Nino Samvelidze from the EU Delegation to Georgia during her welcoming remark.
Caucasus Social Innovation Grant Competition is organised as part of the EU-supported project “EU4Youth: Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development (SEED) for Green Growth”. The project aims to fund outstanding social and green business ideas in the border regions of Georgia and Armenia. A total of 27 youth social and green business ideas were supported from the two South Caucasus countries.
One of the business ideas CHAMPY commented on the Grant Competition. “CHAMPY is a pioneering company of healthy apple chips, which now combines 12 types of apple chips. We got into EU-supported SEED project based on the represented municipality and the social mission when we built our enterprise in a strategic location for the country, in Gori, near the occupation border. The support of the EU was very important to us because we wanted to increase the scale of production. This project helped us in the process of acceleration both in the better formation of the social and environmental mission and in the diversification of production through the allocation of financial resources,” said Tamar Sheitnishvili, Co-founder of CHAMPY.
The EU-funded enterprises from Georgia and Armenia cover sectors such as manufacturing and services and cover areas such as sustainable waste management, ecotourism, agriculture, eco-manufacturing, healthcare and more. By the end of 2022, the funded enterprises will ensure the implementation of environmental and social missions – empowering young people through business, employment, contributing to the solution of social and environmental challenges.
For further questions, please contact:
Ana Petriashvili, Communications Specialist, CENN
Tel: 599 522 127
E-mail: ana.petriashvili@cenn.org
