Activities link

Typically our projects are composed by media-literacy activities, focusing on themes proposed by the partner organizations and fitted on the interests of volunteers, and by intercultural activities, with attention for writing of articles, reports, interviews, workshops held at other institutions, language exchange clubs, and if possible, cineforum or theatre's events. Here is a brief summary of the activities organized until now!

European Identity between Italy and Georgia (part I)

Media-literacy activities

• WordPress & Elementor Pro: we have created a test site for the Institute exploring all relevant features of Wordpress (like appearance customization, menus, pages' language, etc.) and page's design using Elementor's page builder.

"handmade" sticky navbar, diagonal bands and page effects created with Elementor's Page Builder

Specifically we have explored all built-in widgets of Elementor, and we have added custom javascript to the Ocean-wp theme (one of the themes suitable to Elementor) in order to display a sticky header on top with dynamic shadow – basically we have used a jQuery function to change the class name applied to the top panel on scroll, as below

jQuery(document).ready(function($) {

	$(window).scroll(function() {     
    	var scroll = $(window).scrollTop();

    	if (scroll > 0) {
    	    $(".my-header").addClass("my-header-active");

    	} else {
        	$(".my-header").removeClass("my-header-active");
		}

	});

});

– we have also learned how to create templates of pages and layout elements, in order to "assemble" Wordpress pages using Elementor from a set a predefined and customized layout elements ("templates", indeed)

• we have added a word cloud data visualization widget based on d3.js and we have customized it on the basis of the d3.js APIs in order to create a zoom effect on mouse over single tags (to be completed allowing single tags to act as links targeting articles related to them). See here for an example.

• we have created a simple script using Python and RAKE, activated through Wordpress ("save_post" action) in order to automatically generate a set of tags from a given article and to save them directly in the tags field of wordpress' posts, using the "wp_set_post_tags" function. The rake script creates a list of words completed with scores based on their relevance in a given text and it's based on this example.

• we have created a Nuxt.js website mirroring the test site, at this address, with a more interactive and dynamic interface than Wordpress can offer. Nuxt.js is a framework based on Vue.js, a Javascript framework for creating user interfaces / front-end sites, and it's able to create static pages from Vue.js views.

In this case we have started from this template, and we have connected it to our Wordpress site using Wordpress' REST APIs, and we have customized the template in order to display a left navigation panel, as shown below.

Furthermore, we have added a button to the Wordpress administration panel, in order to activate the Nuxt's (static) pages generator, because each Wordpress post has to be statically saved within Nuxt itself in order to be served by that.

This work, of which the most technical parts have been done by team members of our organization, where volunteers have participated by a non-formal learning approach, on the basis of their interest, has been the requisite for the subsequent mobility and even for the subsequent project, because during the subsequent mobility, volunteers have further filled-in the site with contents, and done some slight changes, and during the subsequent project, learning from the experience of Nuxt.js (and also Wordpress) we have completely revised our tools, and we have shifted to an integration of Quasar framework with Mediawiki ...

Intercultural activities

• During the mobility, besides the above mentioned work, we have arranged interviews with the following local actors:
  • Lasha Kharazi (Ph.D in Philosophy at Tbilisi State University)
  • Paramjeet Berwal (PhD at Institute for European Studies in Tbilisi)
  • Michele R. (computational linguist)
  • Tinatin Tsagareishvili (professor of Italian language at Ilia State University)
  • Irakli Availishvili (physicist and painter)
  • Francisco Capote Yeregui (Chargè d'Affairs ad Interim of Kingdom of Spain in Georgia)
  • Andrea Chmielinski Bigazzi (EU monitoring mission in Georgia) and Don Giuseppe Pellizzari (Catholic priest and English specialist)

for all of them (except the one held with Andrea and Don Giuseppe, upon request of Andrea who preferred keep our conversation confidential) we have written a report on the basis of the meeting's minutes

• we have prepared and held the workshop with title "Borders and frontiers, the past, the present and the future: comparative history and international relations between Italy and Georgia", at:
  • Ilia University, 18th December 2018
  • Sokhumi State University, 21th December 2018
  • Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, 13th March 2019
• we have written the following contents
  • Leisure time of some staff members (2 December 2018)
  • "Analysing the shadows: private tutoring as a descriptor of the Education System in Georgia" (review)
  • "Frozen Conflicts in the Post-Soviet Space: What Will 2019 Bring?" (review)
  • "Review: The Russian Interventions in South Ossetia and Crimea Compared: Military Performance, Legitimacy and Goals, Emmanuel Karagiannis" (review)
  • posts about new year's celebration, in Italian and Georgia
  • posts about carnival, in Italian and Georgia
  • posts about crib, in Italian and Georgia

All the contents produced have been created either by volunteers (Gabriele and Mattia) or by volunteers in cooperation with team member, or by team members alone. In all cases the work has been revised by team members of the organization in more or less significant way.

European Identity between Italy and Georgia (part II)

Media-literacy activities

• We have held a workshop on "Personal Data Protection: a Discussion on Mozilla’s Newsletter 5 To-Know" (26 March 2019) at our organization, followed by a report written from Claudia Palazzo
• We have held a workshop on the article The Genesis of Library Genesis: The Birth of a Global Scholarly Shadow Library followed by a written literary exchange

Intercultural activities

Volunteers have written the following articles:

• South Caucasus Security Forum, based on the corresponding gathering South Caucasus Security Forum (Eleonora)
• Ciné-DOC Tbilisi – International Documentary Film Festival (Claudia)

Volunteers have held the following workshops:

• Georgia-Italy: a bridge between two worlds, at Ilia State University

We have allocated 2 scholarships funded by the Institute and one of the volunteers (Eleonora) took in charge to entertain correspondence between our students and the destination school in Arezzo (Italy), to manage their stay (lessons and accommodation)

We have informed Georgian students of studying opportunities at abroad through the following posts, written both in English and Georgian:

• Study in Italy: intensive summer course in the Marche region
• Study engineering in Italy: scholarships available in Torino and Perugia
• Study in Bologna: grants available for BA programmes
• Summer courses in Italy

European-Bridge 2019-2020

Media-literacy activities

The project has focused on