Organization: Research-Intellectual Club „Dialogue of Generations“

Location: Kutaisi, Georgia

Year: 2012

Due to an unsatisfactory economic and thus social situation as well, in many Georgian families parents often don’t have enough time and energy for the upbringing of their teenagers. Therefore the young people have to face the problems of adolescence on their own, which frequently leads to, for example, immature sexual relationships with undesired consequences,

Teenage girls especially tend to not know how to prevent such cases, let alone how to cope with them. Thus, their adolescence is often marked by untimely marriage, depression or even self-harm.

Thanks to the support of NESEHNUTÍ a telephone helpline service was launched in Georgia’s second largest city, Kutaisi, where it had never existed before. The helpline gives young people the opportunity to obtain the information needed, or “simply” to find a person willing to listen to them.

The anonymous helpline consists of a psychologist, a teacher and a solicitor, who are at young people’s disposal 24 hours a day, answering their questions and helping to resolve their problems. Also, owing to good promotion of the servic,e the helpline soon started to be used by a fairly large number of clients.

The most serious case the staff have dealt with so far was that of a young boy who disclosed his intention to commit suicide. The staff persuaded the boy to tell them where he was and immediately set off to look for him. They found him lying on a railway but succeeded in talking him out of his intention and provided him with further care. So, the title of the project – Last Call – was reflected in this way.

The fact that the boy’s life was saved proves the importance of the service. For this reason NESEHNUTÍ supports the association operating the helpline in raising funds which will help to keep the service running. It is being planned to extend the service to an anonymous drop-in to be attended by the young people personally – it has become obvious that the phone line alone cannot resolve all the problems of the young people concerned.