Georgia: Sustainable Reintegration and Community Revitalization Pilot Initiative in Communities of Return

Under the overall objective of contributing to the Government of Georgia's efforts to support sustainable reintegration of returning migrants and community revitalization, the project seeks to pilot innovative interventions supporting the development of local livelihood opportunities for returning Georgian migrants and contributing to the revitalization of their home municipalities to make the environment more favorable to reintegration.

The project will select 10 municipalities experiencing high rates of return (both facilitated by IOM and other stakeholders prior to COVID-19 and those triggered by the pandemic) in rural Imereti and Kakheti and in urban Tbilisi, to pilot a four-fold strategy aiming to contribute to sustainable reintegration of all returning migrants and whole-of-community revitalization, aiming to:

1. Support the local inhabitants in accessing services in the economic, social and psychosocial dimensions, 
2. Ensure that returnees in pilot municipalities achieve improved levels of sustainable reintegration,
3. Engage pilot communities in revitalization initiatives and generate new opportunities for sustainable livelihoods, and
4. Support national stakeholders in validating a new approach to community reintegration and revitalization. The strategy is directly aligned to IOM’s Integrated Approach to Reintegration in context of return, capturing the individual, community and structural levels of reintegration.

Activities to be implemented will include: 

1. Mapping of service accessibility and gaps, development of complementary services and referral package and establishment of Service Hubs in pilot communities; 
2. Piloting of five collective or community reintegration projects in pilot municipalities with a special focus on supporting vulnerable persons including deportees, elderly women, heads of female-headed households and youth, 
3. Participatory identification of community revitalization priorities and realization of five such initiatives, and 
4. Engagement of national level stakeholders in the oversight of the pilot initiatives and participatory development of tested methodology, tools and lessons learned. The pilot interventions will be evaluated thoroughly to provide operational recommendations for future reintegration and revitalization programming in mobility-dependent communities in rural and urban Georgia and in comparable contexts of return.