There is a Georgian joke that goes: “Relatives are the people you see whenever their number changes”. In other words, relatives all tend to gather when any of them gets married, gives birth, or dies. As a result, we frequently observe Georgians organizing mass gatherings to either celebrate or mourn numerical “changes” in their families. While there is a recent trend among the wealthier and better-educated people to switch to more intimate, smaller events, the poorer rural people continue to arrange Georgian supra of monumental proportions.

On November 24th, a Turkish Air Force fighter jet shot down a Russian SU-24 that briefly strayed into its airspace. One pilot was killed, and another member of the Russian military perished in the rescue attempt. Vladimir Putin called the event a “stab in the back” even though he had turned his back on Turkish warnings about incursions into its airspace. Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, facetiously stated that Turkey would not apologize for the event and that Russia should be the one apologizing.

The UNDP conference on agricultural extension, which took place on December 7-9th, featured a 45-minutes presentation of the Social Policy Research Center (SPRC) of ISET-PI. Professor Florian Biermann, head of the center, discussed some preliminary findings of the project “Farmer Knowledge Needs in Georgia”.

Rachvelis, the natives of a beautiful highland region in western Georgia, have a reputation for being slow but thorough in speaking and behavior. Whether slow or not, Rachvelis are certainly not dumb. At least according to their performance in the national General Ability Test (GAT). In 2012, students from Racha-Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti (R-L-KS) were 2nd (!) after Tbilisi on the average GAT performance (Chart 1).

Aiming to contextualize the challenges and opportunities faced by Georgian trout farmers, the ISET Policy Institute, in cooperation with CARE international and the Georgian Farmers Association (GFA) organized a trout sector stakeholders’ forum in Kutaisi on December 4th, 2015.