International Services

How do you talk about hope? In a camp in Georgia, you start with people who lost everything.

They were standing on a grassy floor inside the bunker-like house, one light dangling from the ceiling, bugs crawling through cracks in the walls. “This will be the hardest thing you’ll ever do,” she said. “You’ll have to tell people in this camp that they’re not going back to their old lives – they’re not going home.” The soft-spoken social worker with 25 years of experience looked at the volunteers, who were engineers, teachers, farmers, bankers -- everyone highly educated – and she saw that they already knew the bad news, but that no one had ever articulated the situation as starkly as Adolph had. They’d lost everything, including much of their hope, it seemed.

“You can leave if you like,” she gently told them that first day. Some cried, but they all stayed. They had work to do in the so-called “village.”

The Georgian Association of Women in Business had recruited Adolph from the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO) to conduct a five-day training session. CESO is a non-profit organization with 2,800 volunteers on its roster. The Association, also a non-profit agency, had teamed up with CESO in 2004 to work with disadvantaged groups, helping entrepreneurs, primarily women, to start new businesses. Now, CESO and the Association had sent Adolph to the village, a camp for Internally Displace People (IDP), to train others in alleviating depression and despair. Around the same time, CESO volunteer Alan Davidson, an agricultural-business expert, worked with farmers and community leaders in Gori. And, the year before, hospitality expert Brian Crumblehulme had volunteered in a prison for women, helping eight ex-prisoners to find jobs or start small businesses in their communities. One former prisoner had begun working at a guest house and a second had begun planning a bed-and-breakfast.

At the Gori camp, Adolph’s assignment was to talk with a group of “social workers” — good listeners who would help others get through the most horrific experiences of their lives. After the Russian-Georgian war of last year, the Georgian Association knew that the men, women and children in the camp needed psychological and social support. The area contained no trained social workers. Some of the adults wanted to start businesses – start anything – and everyone wanted to go home, but their houses were destroyed, their lands fallow and their careers gone. Adolph and the volunteers discussed how to recognize trauma symptoms and how to address alcoholism, violence and powerlessness, as well as how to talk about hope if the opportunity arose. At the end of the sessions, Adolph returned to Canada, and 13 women and two men returned to help their communities in the IDP village.

The 25 staff at the Georgian Association continued Adolph’s work and the work of other CESO volunteers who had partnered with disadvantaged groups. Since collaborating with CESO, especially in the region of Svaneti, the Association has helped to start or expand 76 businesses and generate 130 jobs a year.

The Association’s main initiative, however, was a Business Incubator. Over five years, with strategic input from CESO volunteers, it grew from offering a few training courses to offering services for 850 people. It also helped to establish the first bank in the Svaneti region. With support from CESO’s volunteer advisers and funding from the Canadian International Development Agency, the Incubator has provided training in business management, micro-credit programs, printing services, tourism and start-up training in other industries.

The focus has always been to provide services and education to groups who need it most. “The 15 trainees helped themselves through helping others,” Rheba Adoph told CESO staff after she returned to Canada. “Social workers listen with a third eye, they listen to what is not being said,” she said. The Georgians in the session quickly picked up that notion, the heart of social development.