Study trips abroad for students from Georgia

The programmes

• European Study Trip, Brussels and Strasbourg. Seven days inside the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of the EU, the EEAS and the Council of Europe, with a plenary session in Strasbourg. It is EEC's flagship, run since 2017 and now about twice a year.
• Science Expedition, Geneva and Zurich. Seven days for students aged 14–18: CERN's ATLAS and ALICE experiments, physics laboratories at the University of Geneva, the United Nations, Zurich, and the Swiss Science Center Technorama in Winterthur.
• TechExpedition, Silicon Valley. Eight days based in San Francisco: Stanford and UC Berkeley, Google, Meta, Adobe and Intel, a space-science day with NASA in Oakland, and an evening with Georgians who work in the Valley.
• Nordic Summer School, Tallinn and Helsinki. One to two weeks on digital government, innovation and entrepreneurship: e-Estonia, the universities of Tartu, Tallinn and Helsinki, and the startup scene, with an international certificate at the end. Dates and price are still to be announced; EEC publishes them on its own site.

Each programme's card on this page shows its next date and current price, taken straight from EEC's own calendar, and opens the programme's page on EEC's site, where you register.

Who can take part

The programmes are for school and university students from Georgia; the Science Expedition is for ages 14 to 18. Registration is on EEC's own site and asks for the student's contact details, school or university, and, for anyone under 18, a parent's or guardian's name and phone. EEC reviews every registration and confirms each place, and for the Science Expedition it selects the participants, so a short CV helps. Briefings abroad are in English.

What the price covers

Each price covers the hotel, airport transfers, transport during the programme and every visit and workshop. The Geneva and Silicon Valley prices include breakfast. Flights from Tbilisi are always separate, so you can take the best fare for the dates. Most meals are paid on the spot.

Visas and documents

With an ordinary Georgian biometric passport, students travel to Belgium, France, Switzerland, Estonia and Finland without a visa, for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. The United States is different: Georgian citizens need a visitor visa, decided at an interview at the US Embassy in Tbilisi, so start well before a Silicon Valley group. Under Georgian law, a child under 16 leaves Georgia with the permission of one parent or legal guardian and accompanied by an adult, and a 16- or 17-year-old with the consent of one parent or guardian.

How to choose

EEC's own advice to parents is to ask what a student will learn, not only where they will go. Choose the programme that matches the subject your child already cares about: politics, law and diplomacy in Brussels, physics in Geneva, technology and business in California. The programmes repeat: the European Study Trip about twice a year, the others periodically. EEC announces each new group on its own site, so if none of the listed dates suit, look for the next one on the programme's page there.