We are the Center for Development and Democracy (CDD) democratic, impartial, representative non-governmental organization in Georgia, established on February 26, 2008. Main objectives of CDD include: respecting and promoting democratic values, embedding these values throughout the society, improving citizen involvement and participation in ongoing developments in the country, improving legal culture and promoting the respect for law and order throughout the public, engaging the society in different social projects.

One of the priority directions of CDD is confidence building and enhancing citizens’ awareness and promoting development of the civil society.  Most achievements of CDD are related to building capacity of civil society organizations and development of skills for youth, including minorities and religious community.  CDD has developed interesting profile in the field of the confidence building. The interest has been stimulated by the previous experience as the first-hand beneficiary of the COBERM I funded project “Academic, Political and Development Challenges: Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia”, which was organized by the Eastern European Study Centre (EESC) in June 2011 in Vilnius. And followed by Implemented project “New Initiative for Peaceful Future” under COBERM II. This events and experience was very successful and demonstrated that sensitive topics related to history and cooperation among conflict affected communities is nevertheless possible at the people-to-people level. CDD gained substantive experience in confidence building processes and has made valuable contacts at this event that has been sustained via internet ever since.

Between March 2014 and January 2015, CDD implemented “New Initiative for a Peaceful Future” (NIPF) project, which was implemented under the joint EU/UNDP program “Confidence Building Early Response Mechanism” (COBERM). The achievements of the NIPF project were beyond expectations of donors, organizers, experts and beneficiaries. After the successful project events Active Citizens’ School 1 and 2 (ACS – 2014), which were organized in Turkey with the purpose of creating opportunities for confidence building processes between youths from Tbilisi and Sukhumi were completed, participants of ACS-2014 divided themselves into three different civic initiative groups working simultaneously in Sukhumi and Tbilisi on issues related to Environment, Culture, Media, etc.

CDD has been receiving financial support to implement projects from: British Embassy Tbilisi; Good Governance Fund; Embassy of Kingdom of Netherlands in Georgia; National Endowment for Democracy; Council of Europe, USAID via RTI International, Open Society Georgia Foundation, US Embassy Tbilisi,  and more.