Parrot Puzzles & Glittering Fir Cones at the QSI Winter Bazaar

The annual QSI pre-Christmas event was almost too big this year. “We have so many vendors we were thinking about setting it up in the gym”, says Eka Khmaladze, President of the Parents Support Group who organizes the event in the QSI International School. “But there are too many activities going on there.”

40 vendors turned up at the school on Friday to sell their handcrafted goods to the public, including Christmas trees decorations, wooden toy animals and sketches and paintings of Tbilisi. Their stalls were spread throughout the hallways on all floors of the school building in the Dighomi district.

Organizing a Winter Bazaar at Christmas time has become a tradition at the QSI International School.

Daniel Blaho has been the director of the school for three years now, and says that the Bazaar was a set tradition before him. Yet it is only in recent years that it has grown big enough to be able to open its doors to the public, while before it was just for QSI students and their parents to raise funds for the activities of the Parents Support Group. Now there are vendors from charitable organizations- including Art Koda Social Enterprise, KERA, Disability Center, and Association for People in Need of Special Care- who pay 20 GEL for a stall while all sales profits are theirs to take away. Helping make those profits are a huge variety of visitors on the lookout for Christmas goodies. 

Khmaladze is waiting for her next 'class' in one corner of the cafeteria. She helps the visiting children paint fir cones. On the table next to them are piles of cookies made by their parents.

Outside the cafeteria the Association for People in Need of Special Care, which attends various such bazaars, sells carving boards, parrot-shaped wooden puzzles and notebooks made of recycled paper, all made by the 54 mentally challenged people the organization takes care of.

It's already the third time the Association has attended the Winter Bazaar at the QSI International School. But the future of the Association is uncertain, says Ramaz Razmadze, manager of the wood workshop: “We are in need of money because our donators are withdrawing. The 12 GEL per day and person from the State is not enough – nor, unfortunately, is the profit from the bazaar sales." 

Down the hallway a crowd of kids is gathered around a cage in which sit a number of small dogs. They're not for sale- the Dog Organization Georgia brought them here to promote their work. Totally dependent on donations, the organization gives shelter to street dogs and has a program for vaccination and sterilization. And they're selling calendars here with pictures of their homed and homeless dogs.

Eka Khmaladze has to go as her next class has arrived. With a lot of enthusiasm the pupils turn fir cones into glittering Christmas decorations. 

The event seems so be a success...and it is likely they'll have to have it in the gym next year.

By Lukas Mader