Even before the founding of “Life Chance”, the founding team was already active in the field of educational support for socially disadvantaged young people and collected experience in various projects, together with the german organization FIB (Förderverein für Internationale Austausch), which is still closely connected to “Life Chance” this day. Out of this work and impression, came the urgency to develop this field, specifically in Georgia, to intensify the educational work and be able to get more into it, to change as much as possible on a local scale.
For these reasons, in 2010, Lela Ekhvaia, Temo Tikaradze, Giorgi Arsenidze, Vakhtang Marschania and Nino Togonidze founded the Association “Life Chance”. Subsequently, the team worked in various children’s homes across Georgia, in Kojori, Diromi, Aprika and Gldani. In these children’s homes, Life Chance brought joy and light by offering artistic activities such as sculpting, painting, wood and stone workshops and music courses. “Life Chance” then founded various workshops, such as a clay workshop, where the young people could try out handicrafts.
In 2012, a deinstitutionalization reform took place, which dissolved large children’s homes and replaced them with small children’s homes, so-called “small families”, in which around 10 young people live with caretakers, thus was more individual care is possible. However, the responsibility of the state and the caribg conditions for these children was only limited up to the age of eighteen. This regulation, which is still in time, makes it extremely difficult for the children to develop an independent life and to escape poverty.
It is all the more important to do pedagogical work with socially disadvantaged groups in early adolescence in order to support personality development, the search for interests and the final decision on a career. Thereby our aim is to integrate those young people into the society and offer them adequate childhood and future.