Revitalizing Communities through Employment and Infrastructure
CHF International launched the 5-year Georgia Employment and Infrastructure Initiative (GEII) in October 2004 with the assistance of USAID. The program is assisting vulnerable communities in achieving greater self-sufficiency and stability by providing vocational training and employment opportunities in construction skills while rehabilitating community-prioritized major infrastructure. The community-driven process, which focuses on hundreds of communities and entrepreneurs across Georgia, aims to achieve the following objectives:
- Promoting and enhancing entrepreneurship, incomes and employment opportunities through economic facilitation and outreach.
- Increasing capacities for public-private partnerships in rural areas through innovative partnerships between government, the private sector, and civil society emphasizing planning and strategy.
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Economic investment projects supported by CHF are competitively selected based on their potential to create and sustain jobs, increase incomes, provide cost savings and stimulate entrepreneurial activity. These projects—which generally complement and enable other community-based initiatives—include:
Economic Infrastructure: Irrigation systems, market rehabilitation, produce storage facilities, roads, etc.
Income Generation: Greenhouses, small-scale food processing, tourism and handicrafts.
With this vision, GEII is undertaking a host of integrated local economic development initiatives, divided between the following two programmatic components:
- Public-Private Partnerships. Activities carried out under this component facilitate and strengthen the link between the three sectors and promote institutionalization of sustainable practices. Investments made under this component will directly support and reinforce the priorities of GEII stakeholders, couched within national, district, and regional strategies.
- Economic Facilitation and Outreach. Activities carried-out within this component are designed to develop the business and entrepreneurial skills of community, government, and business leaders. Learning is reinforced through support them through investments in productive practices and assets.
In achievement of this, GEII will:
- Create more than 3,000 new long-term jobs through enterprise development activities;
- Stimulate 250+ loans valued at over $250,000 through project leveraging and referrals;
- Assist small to medium sized enterprises to increase sales totaling over $2,500,000 in collaboration with SME Support and AgVantage;
- Institutionalize sustainable planning / dialogue through at least 15 Economic Development Advisory Groups and integration of 132+ community economic development plans;
- Reinforce existing planning processes and bolster national priorities in all regions where GEII works through alignment of investments to district – regional – national strategies;
- Directly benefit over 350,000 stakeholders throughout Georgia through project activities.