Tag Archives: armenia

Hopeful Youth Mean a Bright Future for Armenia

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A group of our volunteers from across the United States are visiting Heifer projects in Armenia this week. Our community volunteer coordinator Kate Merrill is chronicling this study tour on her blog, and some of my favorite stories and images from her trip depict smiling, hopeful children. As with any nation, Armenia’s hope for a bright future lies in its young people.

Heifer Armenia knows this, and in recent years they’ve established a number of youth clubs that give rural youngsters training in such disciplines as agriculture, ecology, civics, journalism, healthy lifestyles, and business.You can read more about this program in one of our previous posts.

In the video below, two children from one of Heifer Armenia’s youth clubs sing in Armenian for the study tour group. The youths sing a cappella — their only accompaniment is the clapping of the audience. They sound really good. 

Here’s another video that shows the type of skills Heifer is teaching Armenian youth. Two children who received a calf as part of Heifer Armenia’s YANOA project showcase their calves at a local fair.

Biogas: More than a source of energy

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by Puja Singh  – Heifer Nepal

Poverty has many dimensions. While being poor relates directly to having less to eat, energy is definitely a primary concern for many poor families around the world.  A recent poverty matters blog post looks at how energy directly impacts the poverty situation in many poor countries. 
 
In Nepal, the lack of energy is not just a problem for the poor. The country has continuously had to schedule rolling blackouts for many years now. A general problem intensifies when it reaches the poor. Most of the rural communities are not connected to the grid. Women and girls, primary caregivers for the family, spend hours in a day searching for firewood in the already dwindling forest. These are hours that might have been better spent farming or perhaps, if she is lucky enough, studying.
 
A solution to the current energy situation in Nepal is huge investments in hydro power and solar power fueled by aid and government money. Are they useful? Yes. Are they enough? Probably not. Overlooking the time it will take for these plans to materialize and not addressing the politics that might keep these projects from finishing or even launching, fulfilling the urban energy deficit will still be a priority. People in the cities can pay, enabling the government to pay back the loan from World Bank or some other entity.
 
A better solution is biogas. Many Heifer projects that give buffalos also provide support for installation of a biogas plant. The manure from the animals is used to produce methane gas used as fuel for cooking and to light bulbs. This diagram below explains how it all works, and more information about biogas plant construction can be found here.

 
Heifer’s work in countries with multi-faceted problems like Nepal does not just stop in giving livestock gifts to end hunger. But it can invest in innovative ways which can address other over-arching problems with the use of livestock and agriculture. Yes — biogas provides energy. But it does so much more:
  • Saves time that would be spent in searching firewood and allows for girl children to focus on schooling often neglected due to manual chores.
  • Produces smokeless fire, lessening the occurrence of tuberculosis, impaired vision and breathing problems. 
  • Produces light so work can be done and children can read after dark. 
  • Produces manure slurry which is excellent organic fertilizer. 
  • Aids in managing animal and human organic waste. 
  • Reduces the demand for fossil fuel.

Celebrating Empowerment in Nepal

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Our Nepal-based communications officer, Puja Singh, sent us this great video of last month’s Heifer Day celebration. The day commemorates the anniversary of the start of Heifer’s work in Nepal, and this year’s event was hosted by Heifer’s project partners and project communities in Dhading District. Puja also shared this explanation: 

For more than 50,000 families in Nepal, 26 September is a special day. This is the day when a small organization from Little Rock, Arkansas started work in Nepal, giving gifts of animals and training women whose lives consisted mostly of hard work and sacrifice. Heifer’s work started with ending hunger through these gifts. In the past 14 years the families Heifer has worked with in Nepal have taught us to be communities together to continue the work that Heifer started. It is this spirit that Heifer Day celebrates on this day every year. 

If you’re like me, you’ll find this video to be very compelling because it tells an incredible story of empowerment in the words of the women whose lives are forever changed for the better. 
   

A Hefty Potato Harvest in Shirakamut Village, Armenia

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Original story and photos by Knarine Ghazanchyan, program/training coordinator for Heifer Armenia


When summer ends and gives way to fall, the Armenian landscape is covered with earth tones and a golden hue. The incredible beauty is the perfect backdrop for the farmers as they prepare to gather the harvest they have been working for the entire summer.

A wide variety of fruits and vegetables are waiting in the gardens to be picked. Families throughout the rural areas gather their harvests and, in preparation for the upcoming winter, dry or can the fruits and vegetables. Many farmers put aside part of the harvest for planting the next spring. This is also the time to calculate the income generated from the harvest sales.


Heifer Armenia regularly monitors and visits the rural communities involved with its projects. During one such visit to the Shirakamut community, they met project participant Karen Temuryan. He was busy calculating how much income his potato harvest yielded. Born and raised in Shirakamut, 30-year-old Karen is full of energy and enthusiasm, and has exciting plans for the future. Three years ago he married 27-year-old Lala, and they now have a 2-year-old daughter, Goharik, who is the pride of her parents.


In the spring of 2010, Karen became a Heifer Armenia project participant. The project, Agricultural Production and Youth Development to Build Sustainable Livelihoods in Shirakamut Village, is implemented in partnership with the Armenian Missionary Association of America (AMAA). He actively participated in the trainings on potato growing and other agricultural topics that Heifer Armenia provided to its project participants.

At the time Heifer Armenia visited Shirakamut, Karen had already gathered his potato harvest, and he was very happy with the result. “I’m very thankful to Heifer Armenia and AMAA for giving me the opportunity to be engaged in the project,” he said. “It’s unbelievable ‑ I planted 661 pounds of potatoes, and now my harvest is about two tons. I worked hard during the summer, and as a result I received a very good harvest. When you work diligently, you get good results.”


Karen plans to to sell about one ton of the harvest, and the rest will be used for family consumption. Karen said that next year he plans to work even harder to get a greater harvest of potatoes so he can then pass on high-quality potato seeds to other people through the Heifer project. He wants to help other needy families secure stable sources of income and live a sustainable and self-reliant life.

Fostering Young Leaders in Armenia

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Steve Denne, Heifer International Chief Operating Officer, and Pietro Turilli, Vice President of Central and Eastern European programs, recently completed a trip to Armenia where they visited Heifer projects and laid the groundwork for the expansion of our anti-hunger initiatives there. 


by Liana Hayrapetyan- Communication and Public Relations Officer

On September 7, during their field visit to the  Vayots Dzor region, Steve and Pietro, along with Heifer Armenia staff ,visited the youth club established by Heifer Armenia in the Areni community. The Areni Youth Club was founded in 2006. Children here get an extracurricular education. As in all the other youth clubs established by Heifer Armenia, the Areni club focuses on seven key areas: agriculture, ecology, civic education and rights, journalism, healthy lifestyles, logical thinking, and business.


Youth club members welcomed the guests with high inspiration, and some of the club’s most active members made a presentation about the groups’ activities. Nelli, a dark-haired girl from the journalism group told the visitors in English about the articles that she wrote using journalism skills she learned through the club. Mamikon, a blue-eyed, tall boy who took business classes was enthusiastically telling about lessons on SWOT analyses and other marketing principles his group had learned.


Other members told about their regular ecological activities such as garbage removal, tree planting and schoolyard cleaning. As proof of their activities, they showed us the decorative trees they grew from the seeds that Heifer gave them a few years ago.There were also apple and pear trees planted in the school yard in the framework of the Polish Aid project implemented by Heifer Armenia and its NGO partner, “Development Principles.” 


The club members love it when Heifer Armenia staff and visitors from Heifer International headquarters come to their club, get acquainted with their activities and appreciate their work and social activism. They also love their favorite club, which gives them so many skills and so much knowledge.

In Armenia, It Takes a Village to Help a Village

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by Steve Denne, Chief Operating Officer


In concept, a Heifer project is simple: engage communities, mobilize smallholder farmers, train them and provide livestock. Next, we support them in a number of ways and monitor until the project is complete. In practice — in real places like the Armenian villages of Arpi, Areni, Norashen and Varser that we’ve visited on this trip — a Heifer Project is a complex mix of relationships, expert support, a variety of physical inputs, encouragement, troubleshooting, and management. Although the Heifer Armenia team is very talented, it cannot make a project happen on its own. No Heifer country program office can. Heifer works with many partners.


Thus Pietro (our VP of European programs) and I have joined with Heifer’s Armenia country director, Anahit, and her team to explore new opportunities with key partners. On Tuesday — the first full day of our visit — we met with Gagik Khachatryan, director of the Project Implementation Unit of the Government of Armenia/Ministry of Agriculture. We discussed an important collaboration in the context of a major World Bank-financed project (we’ll be sharing more about this soon). 


We also met with the director, Gagik Sardaryan, and deputy director, Sevak Manukyan, of the Center for Agribusiness and Rural Development (CARD). CARD provides services to small farmers that include small loans, sales of equipment and business development. CARD is a key partner in a new dairy value-chain project called, “Milk for Money.” Afterward, we met with the executive director of Ashtarak-Kat, Stepan Aslanyan. Ashtarak-Kat is the leading milk and dairy product processor and distributor in Armenia. It is a key partner in a dairy value chain project in a different part of the country. 


Finally, we concluded the day with dinner with Andrzej Szmidtke, the First Secretary for Economic Affairs for the Embassy of Poland. The Government of Poland finances foreign development work through Polish Aid, its development cooperation agency. Through the support of Heifer Poland, Polish Aid awarded some of its first grants to fund Heifer Armenia projects.


On Wednesday, we were honored with an audience with His Holiness the Catholicos of All Armenians, the spiritual leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Church is a major historical, cultural, spiritual and social force in Armenia. Heifer Armenia has collaborated with the Church in specific ways, but more generally, it shares a common mission to meet the needs of the hungry and the poor. The Church is also a founder and supporter of another partner, the Armenian National Ecumenical Church Loan Fund (ECLOF).  After the Catholicos, we met with the General Director, Tigran Hovhannisyan.


Our trip to Armenia so far has been a rich opportunity to help in the building of villages of partners to bring a greater impact to the villages of small farmers across Armenia.


To read more about Heifer’s work in Armenia, click here. You can also read about our Armenia team here.  

Heifer Armenia: Meet Our Team

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As we mentioned in our previous post, Steve Denne, and Pietro Turilli, are traveling throughout Armenia this week. We’ll be sharing some updates about their project visits and the groundwork they’re laying for the expansion of our anti-hunger initiatives there. In the meantime, we thought we’d introduce you to our Armenia team.

 
Front row, from left to right: Anahit Ghazanchyan, Steve Denne, Pietro Turilli. Back row, from left to right: Vahe Sardaryan, Mariam Asoyan, Emma Sargsyan, Liana Hayrapetyan, Knarine Ghazanchyan, and Aram Petrosyan 

Meet the Armenia Leadership Team

Anahit Ghazanchyan, Country Director

Anahit Ghazanchyan holds a Master’s in Public Health (1997). She is also a Candidate of Sciences in Molecular Biology (1988). Anahit was a founder of People for a Healthy Lifestyle NGO (PHL), the first Heifer Partner in Armenia and the South Caucasus. For seven years Anahit served as Program Advisor and then Program Director at UMCOR Armenia. She has been board member of ArmECLOF Foundation, representing Armenian Apostolic Church, then Heifer Armenia.

Since 1999, Anahit has been an official representative of Heifer International in the Caucasus, first as a volunteer and project holder, then as a Regional Director for the South Caucasus. Anahit is a recognized specialist in leadership and management in community development, program development & fundraising, planning & evaluation, and social marketing and strategic mobilization.

Mariam Asoyan, Finance Manager

Mariam Asoyan graduated State Engineering University of Armenia, the Faculty of Sociology. Mariam holds a master’s (MBA) in finance and accounting from American University of Armenia. She is an ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) affiliate and member of the Association of Accountants and Auditors of Armenia.

Before joining Heifer Armenia, Mariam has worked in ICAS Representative Office in Armenia for a USAID project on Accounting Reform and Development in Armenia as an Audit Manager. Mariam joined Heifer Armenia as Chief Accountant and became the Finance Manager in July 2007.

Vahe Sardaryan, Program Manager

Vahe Sardaryan has graduated from the Agricultural Academy of Armenia, the Veterinary Faculty. For four years he has been working as a veterinarian in the Gugark Region State Veterinary Service Center and a private large stock breeding farm. In 2005 he joined Heifer Armenia – first as Program Assistant, then Program Coordinator. In 2005-2006 he was engaged in EAAP training activities for young specialists in CIS countries. Since 2007 Vahe is Program Manager at Heifer Armenia.

Heifer Armenia operates the reliable and valid systems for administration, trainings, program implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Its working principles and clear policies and well-established procedures allow the program to grow to help more and more families to build sustainable and prosperous livelihoods.

Heifer Armenia: Working for Peace and Better Livelihoods

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From left: Pietro Turilli, Steve Denne, 

Knarine Ghazanchyan,  Mariam Asoyan and Arsen Mkrtchyan plan Heifer Armenia’s new initiatives.


by Liana Hayrapetyan and Emma Sargsyan

Steve Denne, Heifer International Chief Operating Officer, and Pietro Turilli, Vice President of Central and Eastern European programs, are traveling throughout Armenia this week. They’re visiting some of our existing projects and participating in planning meetings for an expansion of our anti-hunger initiatives here. They’ll be sharing more from their travels over the coming days, but in the meantime we want to help you get to know Heifer’s work in Armenia.

Heifer International has worked in Armenia since 1999 and now has 16 active projects covering more than 50 rural communities. We help smallholder farmers improve their livelihoods through sustainable agriculture practices, and we give them various plants and animals including cows, goats, sheep, beehives, rabbits, chickens, fish, turkeys, buffalos, bull calves, Californian worms, potato seeds, alfalfa seeds, wheat seeds, and fruit tree seedlings.

Our projects in Armenia are diverse and innovative. Heifer Armenia focuses on projects which include economic development as well as building capacity of community groups through a variety of trainings delivered by our professional staff and experts. Trainings relate to cattle breeding, horticulture, plant protection, artificial insemination, beekeeping, and animal husbandry. This leads to a network of self-reliant, economically-developed, effectively-cooperating healthy communities that live in peace and an ecologically- sound environment.
 

The value chain development methodology adopted by Heifer Armenia is aimed at establishing economically viable, efficient and sustainable linkages between different value chain (e.g. dairy) actors, thus creating lasting income generating opportunities for its target project participants and contributing to sustainable community development. Heifer Armenia works for improvement of the socio-economic situation of the vulnerable groups (men, women, boys and girls) through development of rural communities, finding solutions for economic and ecological problems, spiritual revival and strengthening peace in the region.

Heifer Armenia also pays serious attention to the youth in the country’s rural areas. Through cooperation with Development Principles NGO, Heifer Armenia has established and successfully runs 26 youth clubs that benefit more than 2,200 children annually. Heifer Armenia created a country-wide rural youth network that trains youth to be peer leaders and peer educators.

Read more about the exciting work Heifer International is doing in Armenia.

Happiness is Coming Back in Armenia

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Submitted by Liana Hayrapetyan,  Communication and PR Officer,
Heifer Armenia



In the years leading up to the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Poghosyan family was one of the friendliest and hardest working families in the village of Nerqin Hand in the Syunik region of Armenia. Arkadi Poghosyan was doing his best to support his family. Every evening when he came home from work, his children ran happily to him. 
Every evening the family all gathered together and enjoyed their supper in a warm and friendly atmosphere around the fireplace in winter and in the open-air balcony in summer.
The Poghosyans were very happy. Respect, love and mutual understanding were reigning in every corner of their house. They couldn’t even guess what fate had prepared for them.
It was a cold winter morning when the grievous news spread all over the village: Arkadi had been killed in the war.
The heavy burden of the family fell to Arkadi’s wife, Anush. She had to support her four children and her father-in-law. Arkadi’s eldest son, Vardan, was 16 then. He understood that it was very hard for his mother to carry the family burden alone; he knew that he was to help the family overcome the difficulties. It was indeed hard for young Vardan to work in the barn, in the garden and in the field, as he even did not know how to use a scythe.
The grandfather insisted on giving up livestock farming as he was too old to help Anush and Vardan. On the other hand, Vardan was too young to run the farm alone and Anush could not manage to do it together with the daily housework and children’s care.
Though the war had ended, many Armenians were suffering from post-war hunger and poverty. Only one cow was left to feed and support the family.
Vardan grew up, served in the army, and took the responsibility as breadwinner of the family. He had a vision in his mind, to have a happy and large family as once they used to have when his father was still alive. Soon he married Hermine, a beautiful young lady from the neighboring village, and they became parents of two wonderful children.
Vardan was doing his best to support his family of seven. When Heifer Armenia started a program in Nerqin Hand, Vardan’s family was on the list of future project participants. In November 2008 the Poghosyans received a cow from Heifer Armenia.

Now Vardan’s children, Aren, 4, and Arkadi, 5 months, have fresh milk and other dairy products every day. The family sometimes sells some of the milk to buy other products. Their cow has given birth to two calves, one male and one female.
Vardan’s vision of an ideal family has become reality. Now the Poghosyans live a happy and carefree life as they did once many years ago. They enjoy wonderful sunny mornings in the summer and warm and cheerful evenings in the winter in front of the fireplace with a cup of hot tasty tea prepared with mint and other herbs gathered from the Syunik fields and mountains.

Moving the Poverty Continuum in Armenia

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by Pietro Turilli 

Armenia is a small country located between Georgia in the north and Iran to the South.   After gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Armenia has faced a lot of difficulties including a plunging economy and an armed conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno Karabakh region. A cease fire was reached in 1994 and things began to stabilize.  
After several years of double-digit economic growth, Armenia, like a majority of countries worldwide, had to face the global economic recession of 2008. Armenia’s GDP declined 15% in 2009 and the proportion of Armenians living in poverty reached 28.4%. 

In addition, about 50 percent of poor people live in rural areas. The unemployment rate is particularly high in these areas, and the main source of income here is horticulture and animal husbandry.

We visited Lernagog village in Armavir region to learn more about ongoing projects which have provided some 130 families with dairy cows. The village lost its sole employer when the local mill closed at the end of the Soviet era, and most families remain without regular income and are trapped by the lack of economic opportunities. One family in particular, the Avetisyan family, received one pregnant heifer. After the birth, they now benefit from about 10 liters of milk per day, which they consume in the form of fresh milk, cheese and yogurt. The family has four children who now have improved nutrition in their diet.
Our team also visited projects in the Arpi and Areni villages in the Vayotz Dzor region.  The Melkonyans are a family of 6.  As is the case with many families here, the Melkonyans are unemployed and the only source of income is their son’s temporary construction work. The family has received one pregnant heifer in 2008 and now is going to pass on its first offspring in the fall of 2011. From the cow, they consume fresh milk, cheese and yogurt for all the members of the family. Sometimes they have a little extra and manage to sell some milk or cheese to generate extra income.

But where do we go from here? The Avetisyans — and many other families we met with in Armenia — want to move beyond subsistence farming and create income opportunities through the sale of milk to the local milk collection centre. For this, they need to increase their stock of dairy cows, improve barn and milking facilities and enhance their technical knowledge.

Heifer Armenia is now developing follow-up initiatives to link families to markets. In the immediate case of the Lernagog community, the team is developing a partnership with one of the main milk processing enterprises in the country. Heifer will provide access to additional animals and technical assistance, while the enterprise will collect milk from the families supported by Heifer. The end result will be families with a regular source of income, with an enterprise that is able to continue growing sustainably through the provision of locally-produced milk.

Why is this important? Heifer works with with poor families to build their capacities and link them to sustainable markets. We call this moving along the poverty continuum, and it empowers these families to go from not having enough to eat to being able to support themselves.

This means people, families and communities that are no longer poor.
 

Pietro Turilli is vice president for Central and Eastern Europe programs at Heifer International. He was accompanied on his recent project visits by Cathy Sanders, vice president of philanthropy, and Paul Yeghiayan, associate director of philanthropy.