ETAG, as a nongovernmental professional organization, has been working successfully in Georgia since 1995. Georgia is a country in the South Caucasus on the eastern coast of the Black Sea on the border of Europe and Asia. During this period, more than 2,500 school and university teachers have been its members. Current membership counts 605 teachers from various parts of the country. Apart from the central office in Tbilisi, ETAG has eight well-established and well-managed regional representations in nine towns of Georgia. This is a very strong network of professionals from schools and universities, state and private sectors, minority and IDP communities. ETAG has an excellent reputation and is considered to be a model professional organization for many Georgian, South Caucasus, and eastern European institutions.

ETAG was the first organization in the South Caucasus to become a TESOL member in 1995. Due to the Georgian-Russian war in 2008 and the following economic crisis ETAG was not able to maintain the membership then and got renewal only recently. With the assistance of the U.S. Embassy ETAG has hosted TESOL speakers at its conferences and at different times has sent eight of its members to TESOL conferences. Over 30 ETAG members have been the finalists of various U.S. government-funded short- and long-term programs including TEA and PIE.

ETAG is also an affiliated member of IATEFL, the British English Teachers’ Association.

PROJECTS

In partnership with the U.S. Embassy Public Affairs Section, Peace Corps, British Council, Open Society Institute, Eurasia Foundation, Hornby Fund, IOWA University, PH International, Ministry of Education and Science and its Resource Centres, Tbilisi State University, and various schools, universities, and educational institutions, ETAG has implemented over 20 large- and small-scale education projects, which have contributed immensely to Georgian education reform as well as to the advancement of the field in general. Some of the larger scale and most important projects are

• Civic education through English language
• Establishing English language libraries in five towns of the country
• Civic education curriculum development for Georgian schools
• Baseline study on English language teaching and learning in Georgia
• Training courses development such as Business English, Academic Writing, B2/C1 oriented training (nine training course in all)
• Methodology trainings of the native-speaker teachers within the governmental project Teach and Learn with Georgia (TLG)
• Training of mentor teachers
• National and international conferences including large-scale South Caucasus conferences in 2003, 2006, and 2009

• Development of the electronic database and network of member-teachers