Community Rehabilitation in Georgia

INTO is partnering with members National Trust for Georgia and Rempart on a two-year project to restore the Tsiskarauli Tower. The generous support of the ALIPH Foundation will allow for the restoration of this  site, damaged by a jet in the 2001 Chechen War. In order to stabilise and restore this missile-damaged heritage site, we will work with our partners to engage an international group of volunteers as part of a working holidays programme.

The ALIPH Foundation has supported the project with a grant of $197,300. After stabilising the tower, in imminent danger of collapse due to the missile hole, the funds will support work with the community to convert it into a local resource for eco-tourism, which tells the story of border conflict in the region.

In order to ensure sustainability for the intervention, the project will work with the local community to host working holidays for Georgian and international volunteers. Working Holidays programmes are a feature of the National Trust model, bringing together volunteers to work on heritage that is important to them.

The volunteers will complete restoration under the guidance of qualified experts from Georgia, France and the UK. They will stay in the local community, who will thereby come to value the economic opportunity that these conflict-damaged heritage sites represent. The National Trust for Georgia staff responsible for coordinating these working holidays will take part in secondments at the French and British partner organisations, INTO and Rempart, where they gain practical experience of delivering working holidays and managing remote heritage assets.