The Election Administration and the Training Centre continue to implement an informational and educational campaign in order to promote the election awareness of young people representing ethnic minorities and their formation as active citizens.

In cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, this time, in the period of October 5-7, 2022, the second stage of the informative-educational program focused on the development of election culture was implemented in nine public schools located in five municipalities densely populated by ethnic minorities (Bolnisi, Tetritskaro, Sagarejo, Telavi, Lagodekhi) and 425 students took part in it.

The importance of the role of voters in the elections and the guarantees for the realization of the right to vote (including secrecy of the ballot and security of the voting process), conditions facilitating the involvement of ethnic minorities in the inclusive election process and services provided by the Election Administration - these are the important issues that the Training Center staff discussed with public school students. Representatives of District Election Commissions shared with the meeting participants the experience of Georgia in the direction of using technologies in the election process and reviewed the procedural differences in relation to the traditional voting process.

In order to facilitate the realization of the received information in practice, a simulated voting process was organized in public schools, in the framework of which the students performed the roles of both the voter and the members of the Precinct Election Commission.

The project is part of the program to promote the involvement of ethnic minorities in the election process. At the first stage, informative-educational meetings with public school students were held in June of this year in 22 public schools located in eight municipalities (Akhalkalaki, Akhaltsikhe, Ninotsminda, Bolnisi, Gardabani, Dmanisi, Marneuli, Tsalka).

Beneficiaries of the mentioned project in total (both stages) are students of basic and secondary level (VII-XII classes) of 31 public schools (total - 985 students, of them women - 553; men - 432).

For the purposes of sustainability of the project, it should be noted that this year the Training Centre also implemented the pilot training program "Democratic Elections and Election Environment", within the framework of which 51 civic education teachers of Samtskhe-Javakheti and Kvemo Kartli public schools were retrained (stream I: 25 teachers from the Azerbaijani sector; stream II: 26 teachers from the Armenian sector). The retrained civil education teachers continue to work with the students of the respective school and the representatives of the school community.