CSD Conducted Four-Day Training Course: "NATO Youth Academy"

On July 22-25, 2024, the Center for Strategy and Development (CSD), with the support of the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, organized a four-day training course titled “NATO Youth Academy” within the framework of the project “Towards Better Understanding of NATO – Phase III."

During the four days, 20 selected young people actively attended lectures held by key experts on current topics related to the North Atlantic Alliance and NATO-Georgia relations.

On the first day, Political Officer Gvantsa Loladze from the NATO Liaison Office in Georgia commenced a series of lectures by introducing the participants to the history, tasks, and objectives of NATO. On the same day, Sandro Megrelishvili, an international relations expert, gave a lecture on the topic of the Russia-Ukraine war and NATO's military assistance to Ukraine. Subsequently, the first day concluded with an online session during which Beata Patasova, a Program Officer of the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, discussed NATO’s approaches to disinformation.

On the second day, former diplomat and Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary Davit Nardaia introduced the main achievements of NATO-Georgia cooperation to the participants. After this, Giorgi Iashvili, a cyber security expert, conducted a lecture on NATO's policies and approaches in the field of cyber security. Following that, representatives of the NATO contact embassies, Jess Duckworth and Alexandra Visalom, reflected on the projects and initiatives their respective embassies conduct in Georgia. The theoretical knowledge was enhanced by an educational visit to the NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center. Here, the Commander of JTEC, Colonel Davit Gagua, acquainted the participants with the history, structure, and mission of JTEC. The students were able to ask questions, engage in discussions, and gain hands-on experience of the training process at the center.

The next day was marked by a meeting with Major General Vakhtang Kapanadze, who delivered information on the security challenges of Georgia and its armed forces. One of the sessions was also dedicated to NATO's action area in the Far East region, led by political scientist and China expert Shako Chikhladze. Towards the end of the day, the CSD team conducted an educational movie-watching session, during which an episode of the Netflix TV series "Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War" was shown to the students. This episode focused on the history of aggressive wars by Russia in Georgia and Ukraine in the 21st century.

The final day of the NATO Youth Academy was dedicated to a lecture on crisis management and a crisis simulation led by Tinatin Agniashvili, an expert in strategic communications and former director of the Defense Affairs Department of the National Security Council of Georgia.

The training course was hosted by the NATO Liaison Office in Georgia.