Home: Freunde Waldorf

Georgia: TEMI

 

A cool storage room for fruits, vegetables and dry products

In order to store fruits, vegetables and dry products such as pasta, rice, semolina, buckwheat and beans well in the longer term, the TEMI community needs a partially tiled, cool room that has a reasonably stable temperature and is suitable for food storage. Currently, one of the six housing units that TEMI was able to winterize with your WOW Day donations last year is being used as a pantry. However, it is a simple wooden room that does not meet the usual standards for pantries. It is too warm in the summer and too humid in the winter, since it is actually intended as a living space and has large windows. Moreover, this current pantry is about a five-minute walk from the kitchen, in another building.

The kitchen, which was added to the main house about 12 years ago, has a basement. This basement contains mostly plumbing fixtures and pipes that have been extended over the years. The plan now is to reorganize all these pipes and create a room in this basement where the community can store their supplies, possibly with a simple goods lift connecting the basement directly to the kitchen. Once the pantry is moved from the room to the kitchen, the plan is to renovate and furnish the vacated room into a guest room. And there, of course, you are welcome to visit TEMI!

To convert the basement into a pantry, the community needs some materials. Among other things, iron is needed for the iron construction of the shelves and shelving boards. According to food regulations, the shelves can no longer be wood, but made of hard plastic or similar material. Tiles for the floor and walls and tile adhesive are also needed. In addition, there are transport costs, electricity, mouse-proof windows with grids and a ventilation system. All this will cost about 3,000 euros. In order to insulate the room well so that the temperature remains balanced, the TEMI community is budgeting about 1,000 euros and for the labor costs and structural changes to the room another approximately 1,000 euros.

In total, the community needs 5,000 euros to set up the pantry.

"We are also happy if you can partially support our project. We will do the work from our own resources, with our workers and caregivers, they are all experienced in improvising! We will be very happy if you want to support our project and help us to build a good pantry for our community, in compliance with the regulations, and to make it possible for us to create a new guest room!"

 

About the project:

TEMI is a social community in the north-eastern Georgian village of Gremi. Today there are about 65 people between the ages of 6 and 75 living at TEMI. Many of them are orphans, some with disabilities others in need of protection due to social or psychological problems. Together with some carers, they form a large family and care for each other. Everybody learns about household, gardening, construction and agricultural work, as far as possible. Handicraft and musical areas such as theatre, singing, piano and panda play, reading aloud, painting, handwork, pottery and others are also offered. In addition, there are various sports activities, language classes in English and German as well as computer lessons, in which interested people from the village can participate.

The community also practices organic winegrowing and produces wine according to traditional methods. They also operate a carpentry workshop equipped with modern machinery. TEMI grows an old wheat variety, the grain is cleaned, ground into flour and baked in its own bakery bread for the community. In addition, in November 2015, an on-site restaurant with bicycle rental was opened.

The aim of the organization is the realization of new social impulses through the formation of a community in which people with intellectual disabilities and young people from the orphanage, who no longer have social support after school, live and work together with caregivers for people in need from broken family relationships. Especially in Georgia, where the social network is organized by family structures, this is a completely new approach.

In 1992, the association bought a brick house and made habitable through a lot of contribution of personal work. They started by giving a new home to a group of young people with disabilities who have lived in an orphanage. During the civil war in Georgia (spring 1993 - spring 1995), however, all had to leave the house and the five orphans were temporarily accommodated privately. There were raids and many things got stolen or destroyed. In the spring of 1995, they could use the house once again and caregivers and volunteers gradually renovated and expanded the house since.

In the year 2000, TEMI has been recognized as a private non-profit organization. Under the leadership of Nika Kvashali, many people and employees, all from Georgia, live and work in the community with very modest salaries. They organize all everything necessary such as money, food, renovations and extensions, provide for helpers, work in school, in the garden, in the kitchen, in the care and in the accounting. The support of Susanna Reinhart, a Swiss woman with Waldorf teacher and theatre training, who, in addition to her transports to Georgia and her continuous support in the community, organises active donations for TEMI, helps to keep the association alive.

Current challenges:

The enormous extent of rural migration in Georgia - 30 to 50% of the population live in the capital of Tbilisi - makes TEMI’s work difficult because there is hardly any infrastructure for socially disadvantaged and disabled people in rural areas. But despite all obstacles, TEMI takes care of these people who, if they do not have a family, have to live on the street. Whenever possible, all those seeking help are welcomed and the community grows steadily.

Since 2005, TEMI has taken in many severely disabled and autistic adolescents from public school homes. As a result, TEMI has been receiving state support for these 24 people for several years, currently 15 lari, which is about six euros per day and person. With the help of donations and the sparse revenues from the sale of its own products, TEMI can also create a living space for many other people in need.

Empower & donate now
Empower & donate now