Hosted and moderated by ISET Policy Institute’s Salome Gelashvili, Acting Head of the Agricultural and Rural Development Policy Research Center, the German Sparkassenstiftung Southern Caucasus and Ukraine (DSIK) have recently developed a presentation looking into their Climate Risk Pattern Analysis in Georgia.

We were thrilled to see Salome Gelashvili, head of the ISET-PI Agricultural Policy Research Center (APRC), actively participate in a UNDP Georgia online discussion. During the virtual roundtable (entitled Local Economic Development and Business Friendly Environment for Municipalities), a variety of notable international speakers, particularly utilizing Czech expertise, came together to consider business development, combatting the rural-urban divide, and the effect of COVID-19 on the informal sector.

May 11 saw the second discussion in ISET's ongoing series of international policy online panels which examine the possible socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second panel was dedicated to what the higher education sector will look like when the pandemic is declared to be over.

International School of Economics at TSU (ISET) and ISET Policy Institute are holding second in the series of international Policy Panels – Re-imagining Higher Education Post-pandemic. It will focus on the impacts of COVID-19 on the higher education sector globally and will bring together top expert views on the longer-term prospects and challenges for the universities and students.

Although the operations of many businesses and organizations have been brought to a crashing halt due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, ISET has refused to allow the crisis to hinder its work. Over the last few months, all teaching and academic activity have been shifted online using Zoom, a format that works equally well for operations of ISET Policy Institute and its efforts to serve as a knowledge accumulation and exchange platform in the lock-down.