No one trains these 'graduates' or tracks them when they leave and they mostly oblige society by disappearing onto the streets where they are a minor nuisance. There are no accurate figures on how many children like Tamuna's 16 "classmates," as she calls them, have been forced out onto the mean streets of cities around the former Soviet satellite nation of 4.7 million people.

Tamuna sees some of her school mates on those streets from time to time: "The girls are mostly prostitutes. The boys hang around and do little or nothing. The boys work as day labourers on construction sites and at unskilled jobs. It's so sad. Sometimes I see them on the streets and they hide from me. I call them but they pretend not to hear. They are ashamed because I am better off, especially the girls who are now prostitutes.

They are ashamed because I am better off, especially the girls who are now prostitutes

"When kids leave an institution, they get confused. They don't know where to go, what to do. Some make it but a lot end up like this and in prison," she says.

Tamuna is part of World Vision's Learners for Life programme which is working to improve the economic prospects of vulnerable youth, aged 14 to 20, who lived in institutions in the cities of Batumi, Kutaisi, and Telavi. The project is initiating training and employment services for these youth raised without parental care and who have no idea how to cope with the world beyond the regimented life in an institution.

The programme will also demonstrate to the Georgian government alternatives to institutional living like community-based small group homes, fostering and adoption, and reintegration into birth families. Tamuna is being mentored by social workers trained by World Vision at Telavi. It is the place she despises and where she bravely volunteers to help some of the 196 youth still living there.

Even a decent institution is an indecent home

Tamuna says the lack of a home to return to some day drove her to succeed. Her parents divorced when she was very young. She, her 14-year-old sister Keti, soon to leave Telavi, and her mother never had a house. "I had nothing, only my mother, and she couldn't take care of me. I was hopeless. We stayed some nights in a special shelter but in the end it was better to put me here."

Tamuna's mother is a street sweeper. Several of the social workers sitting in the room where Tamuna is being interviewed whisper that Tamuna's mother is not mentally healthy. The word used is something like ‘feeble’.

A 2002 study of the Telavi Orphans and Abandoned Children's Boarding School where Tamuna was raised said of the 196 child residents, about 62% had both parents and 45% came from families with multiple children. Only five children were orphans, five were disabled and 15 were of unknown family status. Ages ranged from eight to 16. The report said 162 children had parents living nearby and 30 had parents living at a "medium distance." Most saw their parents once a week.

The primary reasons children are placed in Telavi are poverty and abandonment. (The report also cites "immoral lifestyle of parents" as a less frequent reason.) Ironically, many Georgian parents feel they are doing the best thing by putting a child in an institution. They know they can't feed all the mouths at home and they believe the institutions will take better care of them.

Nancy Archer, until recently the Children's Programme Manager for World Vision Georgia and now with UNICEF, says, "Even a decent institution is an indecent home. Fifty years of research shows institutions are so damaging to children, that the children are psychologically crippled for their entire lives afterwards. A child's needs are not adequately met in an institution." The issue is not poor physical conditions but the lack of love, warmth and heartfelt care.

Tamuna sketches a dark portrait of life in an institution: "The worst thing was the schedule for this place every day, when you got up, when you ate, what you ate. Maybe there was enough food but it was all the same and exactly this many grams of this and so many grams of that. If you missed your lunch, forget it!

"It was so closely defined and there was no freedom whatsoever. There was no heating in the bedrooms. In the winter I had pneumonia once and high temperatures," she says.

When will the day come that this institution is closed?

"There was a good thing about this place, that there were some good people, two teachers who encouraged me. We children were taught to take care of each other. So, I found a little hope. I began to feel I could make it, learn, study. If I worked with these teachers I would learn like normal kids and be accepted by society. Right now it is based on people's good will that they accept me but I believe eventually it will be based on my skills and knowledge."

Tamuna has been outside the institution six years now. She finished a vocational college and is studying at a university to become a teacher. She is interested in social work. She left the institution for a group home. Now she lives with her mother. Her former teachers have even helped her secure a roof over her head at times.

Tamuna is slowly becoming a vocal and widely heard advocate for children in institutions. She spoke recently at the Sheraton Hotel in Tbilisi to a gathering of officials from the ministry of education. "When will the day come that this institution is closed? That's my question for these people. I will continue speaking out," she says, recalling that address.

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