On October 20, “Ezo” restaurant in Tbilisi hosted the Knowledge Café on its premises. The restaurant offered visitors a special menu put together by elderly residents of Tsnori town. The most popular meal was Kakhetian-style bread stewed in red beans. 89-year-old Zizo from Tsnori (Kakheti) shared this recipe in a Knowledge Café promotional video and called on the audience to donate money to the Knowledge Café. The video went viral – it was viewed more than 839,000 times and got 1,700+ comments and 7,800 shares on Facebook – and inspired “Ezo” restaurant, in partnership with the Knowledge Café, to hold a Kakhetian cuisine day (of foods from the Kizikhi region in particular) and donate all the proceeds to the fundraising campaign.
Additionally, the elderly residents of Tsnori sold their home-made jams and hand-made accessories to raise funds for the Knowledge Café. People could also buy bricks (for 5, 10, or 20 GEL each) which will be used to build the Café’s new building. The Café’s founders wrote the name of each “builder” (donor) on their brick, so the Café will have the names of all the builders on its walls. In total, 1,900 GEL was raised at this event.
The Knowledge Café is an independent social venue in Tsnori (Sighnaghi municipality) that currently operates in a rented space. It consists of a multimedia library/bookstore, an education center with indoor and outdoor meeting spaces, and a café, and offers wide-ranging services to locals and visitors. There is no other space like it in the Sighnaghi municipality.
With lots of enthusiasm and donations from citizens, the founders of the Café collected money to buy a plot of land. The fundraising campaign now aims to attract funds to build the Café’s own building. Thanks to EWMI ACCESS support, the campaign has become more innovative and community-driven. It uses diverse outreach tools to mobilize and inspire citizens in raising funds. The new campaign called Share Your Knowledge encourages citizens to share their practical knowledge through home-made videos and calls on viewers to donate funds to the Knowledge Café if they find this knowledge useful.
