From September 2026, students, teachers and parents in five public schools in Ninotsminda, Keda, Ambrolauri, Mestia and Zugdidi will help answer that question through School Participatory Budgeting.

The process will give school communities a practical way to identify their needs and turn them into concrete proposals.

“School Participatory Budgeting is unique because it actively involves the entire school community - teachers, students and parents,” said one participant from Ambrolauri Public School. “The whole school community works together.”

To prepare for the launch, 33 school representatives and civic education experts from the Ministry of Education took part in a three-day Training of Trainers from 21 to 23 July 2026. They also learned from Tbilisi Public School No. 177 and Zestaponi Public School No. 4, which piloted the process during the previous school year.

Through practical exercises and a full simulation, participants learned how to run the process themselves - from identifying school needs to organising a transparent school-wide vote.

As a result, each of the five schools now has trained representatives who can help students, teachers and parents take part in decisions that directly affect their daily school life. From September, school communities will be able to develop and promote their ideas, discuss the proposals and decide together which projects should move forward.

For students, this means experiencing participation not as an abstract lesson, but as a real opportunity to influence the place where they spend every day.

The training was organised within the project “Advancing Participatory and Human Rights-based Local Democracy in Georgia”, implemented by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe under the Council of Europe Action Plan for Georgia 2024–2027, with financial support from the Austrian Development Agency through International Partnerships Austria.