CIVIL SOCIETY ENGAGEMENT PROGRAM

IN GEORGIA

The Civil Society Engagement Program in Georgia is a five-year, 15 million USD activity funded by the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) and implemented by East-West Management Institute, Inc. (EWMI) in partnership with
CANVAS, ZINC Network, International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), European Community Foundation Initiative,
Center for Training and Consultancy, Orbeliani Georgia, and the Global Compact Network Georgia (GCNG). The program started
on November 1, 2021, and will be completed on October 31, 2026.

The Program aims to strengthen Georgian civil society through building the capacity of new and existing civic actors to act as
trusted, legitimate, and effective representatives of citizens’ interests, empower and mobilize communities to advocate for their
rights, and build an ecosystem for civic actors to diversify their resource base. The program will support civic movements, civic
activists, and civil society organizations (CSOs) from across the country to put forward and advance citizen-vetted solutions to
citizens’ key concerns and priorities.

The Program will ensure that women, youth, persons with disabilities, LGBTQI persons, and ethnic minorities participate
meaningfully in all its activities and that their perspectives and interests are reflected in the processes and outcomes.

To achieve its goals, the Program will bring together co-creative processes, tailored and learning-by-doing capacity development
assistance, opportunities for building horizontal and vertical partnerships, e-tech solutions, and flexible grant programs through
the following three key objectives:

Objective 1: Enhance the capacity of civic actors to address citizen identified issues
The Program will provide tailored capacity development assistance and flexible funding to new civic movements and leaders
across the country.

The program will conduct the Civic Activism in Georgia Mapping to identify new civic actors with potential and interest to grow,
harness lessons learned from their activities to date, and identify their shared goals and priorities.

This participatory mapping and other rigorous assessments will inform Program’s training and mentoring activities that will equip
new civic actors and existing CSOs with the new skills to enhance their public outreach and engagement, volunteer cultivation and
management, advocacy, and other needs. Program will also put special emphasis on matching the capacity building around these
hard skills for civic activism with the soft skills that are necessary to protect civic activists from stress and exhaustion often
associated with their work.

Flexible grant programs for community groups and CSOs will enable them to design and implement innovative and context-
specific public education and advocacy initiatives. EWMI will use diverse and simplified grant solicitation and reporting
procedures and approaches to minimize bureaucratic burdens and ensure efficient and effective grant implementation. This will
include issuing seed money and then providing additional grant support to scale up a successful approach, as needed. Grant
programs will include:
 Innovation and Challenge Grants for community groups, and local, regional and Tbilisi-based CSOs to increase civic
engagement on a broad range of topics reflecting citizens’ concerns (up to 80 grants ranging from $10,000 to $30,000).
 Strategic Support & Policy Grants for CSOs to support initiatives that hold the government accountable and advance
good governance in citizens’ priority areas, such as healthcare, social welfare, education, and employment (up to 11
grants of up to $85,000 each).
 Rapid Response Grants to support public awareness or community mobilization efforts on important and time-sensitive
political, economic, and social needs (up to 6 grants annually ranging from $5,000 to $15,000).
 In-kind Grants to support civic activists to mobilize additional resources through people’s funding to implement citizen-
led ideas (up to 30 grants annually).
Grantees will be engaged as early as in the planning stage and throughout the grant implementation using various methods of co-
creation. In particular:
 Social Labs will invite diverse stakeholders in participatory discussions around the grant program design to identify
citizen priority issues to focus on and propose realistic and efficient interventions.
 Design Sprints will engage diverse stakeholders in helping civic actors design effective public outreach campaigns
through prioritizing target audiences and developing actionable communication plans with a wide range of tactics.
 Communication Hubs will apply a learning-by-doing approach and engage creative, digital, PR/media, and production
teams in helping civic actors frame their key messages and fine-tune their communication tools to engage wider
audiences.
 Citizen Assemblies will engage citizens in larger societal debates around divisive policy questions and solutions put
forward by civic actors before these solutions are shared with the government.

Grantees and other civic actors will be offered diverse capacity building opportunities based on a rigorous and participatory
analysis of their needs.

Additionally Program will also support existing e-platforms and develop new e-tools to initiate civic campaigns, collect input and
new ideas from citizens, and mobilize supporters. EWMI will organize regular hackathons to drive and sustain innovation for
adapting existing tools and designing the new ones.

Objective 2: Foster partnerships among civic actors and between civic actors and other sectors
EWMI will foster partnerships between CSOs, new civic actors, private sector actors, academia, and the media in Georgia to build
trust among these key actors, enable peer reflection and learning, and increase their impact.

CSO Bus Tours will bring CSO leaders to remote and underserved communities to identify citizen’s concerns and partner with
other stakeholders to follow on and address these issues. They will expand civic discussions and citizen engagement activities
from Tbilisi and regional centers to remote communities.

Through CSO Learning Circles the program will support small learning groups composed of new civic actors and CSOs to meet
periodically to debate on unifying as well as divisive issues affecting the Georgian civil society and learn from each other and/or
invited trainers and experts.

In-country exchange visits for CSOs and new civic actors working on similar thematic issues, as well as fellowships for junior and
mid-level civic activists and CSO managers in Tbilisi-based CSOs will further reinforce this process and foster meaningful
experience exchange and potential joint actions.

Networking and exchange visits with Eastern European counterparts will bring to bear the power of international organizations
and advocacy groups to advance policy reforms that Georgian new civic actors and CSOs are pushing for.

Annual Pause and Reflect Workshops will bring together new civic actors and CSOs, as well as relevant actors from public
institutions, the private sector, the media, academia, and development partners to review the key successes and challenges in
supporting local civic activism and sectoral reforms.

Objective 3: Develop an ecosystem for sustainability of civic actors

Program will collaborate with other existing efforts to scale up response to identified needs on improving the ecosystem for CSO
financial sustainability and philanthropy in Georgia.

The program will assess the enabling environment for corporate and individual philanthropy and develop a Roadmap for Civil
Society Financial Sustainability and Philanthropy. The assessment will examine existing legislation, evaluate the practices, and
review existing donor programs in this area to account for successes and lessons learned, while the Roadmap will propose a set of
concrete actions for improving the sustainability ecosystem in Georgia. Possible solutions will include not only legislative and
regulatory changes, but improving implementation practices, through training for relevant stakeholders and developing guidelines,
amongst other interventions.

The Program will pilot new mechanisms and other existing efforts for generating sustainable, local resources for civic activism in
Georgia. This may include leveraging new technologies and social media, promoting social entrepreneurship, and piloting
philanthropy through privatization and Livefunding models.

The program will also support partnerships between the civil society and private sectors to help develop thoughtful mid- and long-
term plans for Corporate Responsibility (CR) and promote strategic CR projects that address complex social issues through inter-
sectoral collaboration.

Network of Centers for Civic Engagement (NCCE) uniting Centers for Civic Engagement located in 10 Georgian cities will be
supported to provide space for politically neutral dialogue and initiate activities that address public interest issues with a country
wide reach. The program will work with the Network to help it diversify its funding streams through current and new tools.

Partners
EWMI has assembled an outstanding consortium of Georgian and international partners for implementing CSEP. They include:
 CANVAS (Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies), a global leader in building and running successful
non-violent civic movements, that advocates for use of nonviolent resistance in promoting democracy and human rights.
 ZINC Network, a top-notch communications agency that helps deliver meaningful, measurable change around some of
the most complex social issues, through in-house research, media development, communications, and capacity building.
 International Center for Not-for Profit Law (ICNL), the only global organization focused on laws affecting civil
society, philanthropy, and public participation.
 European Community Foundation Initiative (ECFI), a collaborative initiative that is committed to strengthening and
promoting the community foundation movement in Europe.
 Orbeliani Georgia, the leading crowdfunding platform in Georgia that enables informal civic groups and civic activists
to engage with the resources they need to take positive action in their communities.
 Center for Training and Consultancy (CTC), one of the oldest and most experienced Georgian organizations that
focuses on supporting CSOs and other developmental stakeholders in strengthening their impact on social and
democratic development.
 Global Compact Network Georgia (GCNG), the leading Georgian organization that promotes ten principles of the UN
Global Compact and works to create a progressive future by stimulating sustainable approaches and engaging business.
 Network of Centers for Civic Engagement (NCCE), the national network of ten regional civic centers that supports
civic engagement and networking across the country through hosting and organizing diverse civic events and initiatives.

Contact:
5 Kote Marjanishvili Street
Tbilisi, Georgia
Tel: 995 32 2 202 444
www.ewmi.org