The joint Heifer Armenia and Center for Agriculture and Rural Development program, Milk for Money, provided 49 families with pregnant heifers in 2012. One of those families, the Abovyans from Stepanavan, was motivated to join the project to supply milk for their own family. They are starting to feel the benefits already.
Through the joint program of Heifer Armenia and the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD), many regions of Armenia received the opportunity to improve the breeds of their animals by artificial insemination (AI). One of the first indicators is illustrated by positive results in the Syunik region.
Avet, 16-year-old YES! Youth Club member in Verin Getashen, Armenia, receives award for business plan and starts garlic cultivation business, which brings in a profit after the first harvest.
Members of the Community Agricultural Resource Management and Competitiveness (CARMAC) project financed by the World Bank in Armenia have increased their yields by 20 percent.
Davit is a young schoolboy who lives in the community of Lernagog, which is in the Armavir region of Armenia. As one of the most promising students in the business education direction of the local YES! Youth Club, he decided it was high time to start his own business and generate his own income.
The Berdashen community of Armenia, part of the World Bank and Republic of Armenia’s joint effort, the Community Agricultural Resource Management and Competitiveness (CARMAC) project, is seeing success. Heifer Armenia contributes to this project and supports targeted communities with capacity-building measures involving technical assistance and cost-sharing for the purchase of agricultural equipment.
After Armenia gained independence in 1991, and agriculture was privatized and decentralized, around 340,000 farms formed with an average size of 3.5 acres each. The Community Agricultural Resource Management and Competitiveness project launched in 2011 to target the issues these small, fragmented farms face.
Heifer Armenia came to Chinari village in 2008, distributing pregnant heifers and training to 25 families. The village is about a half mile from the Azerbaijan border. During the war over the Nagorno-Karabagh region from 1991-1994, the village was bombed many times. Now, 20 years after the ceasefire, shootings from the Azeri side have become commonplace for the people of this village to deal with while they are trying to improve their livelihoods.
About 220 Armenian schoolchildren were involved in business education classes, and the most courageous presented their business plans for an initial investment. A wide variety of business projects were received, with most involving the youngsters’ own contributions and investments in both financial and non-financial terms, such as corresponding land for the activities and advice from experienced people they knew personally. It didn’t take long for one youth to realize that the most important thing to businesses is the customer.
The 3rd of November, 2012, will be remembered as a remarkable day in Heifer International’s calendar: it was the 10th anniversary of the first YES! Youth Club established by Heifer Armenia. Back in 2002 the first rural youth club, was founded by Heifer Armenia. This was a new type of investment in Heifer history−a totally different component in the traditional Heifer model of providing cows to needy rural families. The establishment of the club intended to empower rural youth and change the social lives of their community. The club would provide extracurricular education on agriculture, healthy lifestyle and civic education, called directions by the club.
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