The Paros Foundation launched the Debi Arach Children’s Center in Gyumri, Armenia on April 15, 2015 with the help of generous donors. The center, which provides 180 children each week the necessary academic, psychological, social and humanitarian support, has since been a source of positivity in this city. The residents of Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city have endured very devastating realities since the tragic 1988 Spitak Earthquake. More than 100,000 residents were left homeless, and plagued with unemployment and rampant poverty for years to come. In turn, the fate of children in Gyumri has also been affected. Dealing with the difficulty of finding means to feed and care for their families, many parents are unable to provide their children with the proper guidance, supervision, educational aid and the financial resources for them to excel in school and have successful futures. The Debi Arach Children’s Center, which in Armenian means “moving forward,” helps these socially vulnerable children through a holistic approach providing them with both humanitarian and educational support. The center provides counseling and group therapy with a psychologist on staff, homework help and tutoring for almost every subject the children learn in school including English, Math, Art/Design, and Computer classes. Additionally, they are served a nutritious meal everyday, helping them receive the calories and/or nutrients they would otherwise not have. Furthermore, the Center addresses a very important hygienic need by providing the children in attendance with supervised bathing facilities. The goal is to help hundreds of children develop a vision for a successful future, and to give them the skills they need to reach these goals. This project is impacting the lives of hundreds of socially vulnerable children by helping them gain the guidance and support they need in order to create greater future opportunities, and become successful individuals and good citizens.

To date, the center has already had several important successes. At least nine children have been taken out of boarding schools, attend our center and now live back at home with their families. Many of the children who were receiving poor grades in school are now achieving top scores. The children have become socially well adjusted and much more healthier than before with the continued consumption of multi-vitamins and a daily well-balanced meal. Staff trainings have begun with an academic counsel of professionals from the United States and Armenia to ensure that the children are receiving the best care, treatment and methods for their development.

The center is working on funding year five and raising additional funds in order to develop and add to the programs and classes offered with the ability to hire more educators, and get more supplies, and equipment. Funds will also be used to supplement daily activities, hold forums for guest speakers and provide educational and career planning opportunities. $80,000 is needed to cover operating costs for the Center. In January of 2017, Debi Arach successfully launched its first program within its Vocational Training Center, teaching children computer programming, 3d printing and robotics curriculum. The goal of this newest component is to provide these children with marketable job skills in order to help them work themselves out of poverty. In 2019, with the long term commitment by Dr. & Mrs. Gary and Linda Assarian (MI) the vocational training program was renamed the Assarian Vocational Training Program.

Yeghvard is a small border village in Armenia’s Syunik Region. It has a population of just under 300 people. Despite its population and border village status, Yeghvard has a vibrant kindergarten with almost a dozen children attending. The kindergarten does not have a gas connection for its heating needs, and old wooden windows make the space difficult to heat and operate in the winter months, thus leaving the children unable to attend.

Recycling in border villages in the Tavush region is currently extremely limited; as a result, plastic and other trash often goes uncollected and liters the communities. When it is collected, the waste is often put into landfills or it is burned.

Following the success of the first Recycling on the Border project, The Paros Foundation has partnered with the Innovative Solutions for Sustainable Development of Communities NGO, or ‘ISSD’ to implement their second recycling initiative in ten border villages in the Tavush region. The proposed project involves going to several schools and providing specially marked recycling bins for paper and plastic. The children will then be educated on the benefits of recycling and why it is important. Schools will be given three months to collect the recycling, when it will then be picked up and transferred to the proper recycling facilities.

Some new components have also been introduced. In order to provide incentive first and second place prizes will be given out to the schools who have collected the most paper and the most plastic at the end of the competition. The schools participating will also need to choose 5-10 students to be student ambassadors (depending on the size of the school). The model for the student ambassadors is as follows:

• One student from each grade, starting from the 4th grade
• The rest of the ambassadors will be from the older grades (whomever wants to participate up to 10 total ambassadors)
• The student ambassadors’ role will be to represent their school in the recycling competition. They will make sure the other students are recycling properly, the bags are tidy and prepared correctly, etc.

In addition to the recycling competition, older students from all the schools are invited to participate in another competition where they must develop a business idea involving recycling. Students can choose to work alone or with a team to come up with new ideas involving recycling and creating a business.  The ideas will be evaluated and the best one(s) will be given funding in the form of materials/equipment needed to start the business up to 1,000 USD. Every two weeks, students will meet with ISSD representatives to discuss both the general recycling competition and the business idea competition. Winners of this competition will be brought to Yerevan on an excursion to talk with other business people and develop their winning idea.

The Armenian Dental Society of California has partnered with The Paros Foundation in order to help revive its mobile dental clinic and help bring dental care for poverty stricken communities in Armenia. Dental hygiene is commonly overlooked in many of these communities due to several reasons. Dental supplies and dental care are either very hard to find or too expensive for residents in these villages to afford.

To date, the Mobile Dental Clinic has served over 100,000 patients. Drs. Gary Kevorkian and Jack Bayramyan have taken the lead to help secure funding for the clinic. Sponsorship of this project will help raise the funds needed to keep the mobile clinic in operation. The clinic has two dentists, a nurse, a driver on staff who travel along with the mobile clinic and provide dental care for village residents. Dentists from the US have the opportunity to join the two local dentists on a volunteer basis. $2,700 will help keep the mobile clinic working for one month. Dental care provided by the mobile clinic will include basic child oral care and education, cleanings, fillings and other basic care.

Nor Luyce works with young girls, ages 14-17, from two local orphanages and/or from poverty stricken families from Gyumri, Armenia. Under the direction of their Executive Director, Shoghik Mikayelyan, the program provides their mentees with positive roles models and emotional support. The reduction of isolation is provided by mentors and by field trips, which expose the children to various work and educational settings. In addition, Nor Luyce’s program emphasizes the development of educational and career plans. They are now at the stage of either beginning or continuing to help implement each older child’s plan for higher education. Each child has also either completed or is in the process of completing a career plan, which includes the most appropriate type and place of higher education.

Nor Luyce is trying to provide the following young girls from Gyumri, with a scholarship that would reduce their out of pocket costs towards their education:

The Armenia Support Fund (ASF) was established in early 2020 to take on strategic initiatives impacting Armenians in both Armenia and around the globe. In response to COVID-19, ASF partnered with The Paros Foundation to launch the “Armenia COVID-19 Small Business Support Initiative,” which aimed to raise funds to support the business-related needs of family-owned businesses negatively impacted by COVID-19 in Armenia. This project raised $50,000 and provided small business grants to over 40 struggling businesses in Armenia. As part of ASF’s efforts to help rebuild Armenia after the devastation caused by the Azeri conflict, ASF has once again partnered with Paros to build the first ever exclusively Armenian online marketplace platform. This e-commerce website will be called, Shop Shouga (Armenian for marketplace) and will help businesses in Armenia sell overseas to diaspora communities and non-Armenians. We have handpicked and curated the collection to ensure the quality and value of the products. Our team will help purchase the products that ASF has sourced from Armenia as well as ship them to Los Angeles where they will be placed in a fulfillment center for delivery.

On the morning of September 27th, Azerbaijan, with a population of 9 million people launched an attack on the small Christian Armenian civilian population of only 150,000 people who have lived in territory of Artsakh for thousands of years. More than 800 Armenians have been killed and more than 110,000 civilians have been displaced. Internationally banned cluster-bombs are being used against the civilian population in Artsakh. Schools, churches, hospitals and more than 2700 residential structures have been damaged and destroyed by continuing shelling of these civilian targets. Azerbaijan’s oil-rich corrupt dictator, Ilham Aliyev, has said he will not stop the attack until there are no Armenians left in Artsakh.

Funds raised through this project will be allocated 100% to assist with the massive immediate humanitarian needs of people from Artsakh who have left and taken shelter in the Vayots Dzor region of Armenia.

A new axis of terror is being formed on a new front in the world—in Nagorno Karabakh or Artsakh with its historical name. On the morning of September 27th, Azerbaijan, with a population of 9 million people launched an attack on the small Christian Armenian civilian population of only 150,000 people who have lived in territory of Artsakh for thousands of years. More than 800 Armenians have been killed and more than 110,000 civilians have been displaced. Internationally banned cluster-bombs are being used against the civilian population in Artsakh. Azerbaijan is committing war crimes as they torture and kill POWs including the video recording of an Armenian soldier being beheaded and posted to social media. Schools, churches, hospitals and more than 2700 residential structures have been damaged and destroyed by continuing shelling of these civilian targets. Azerbaijan’s oil-rich corrupt dictator, Ilham Aliyev, has said he will not stop the attack until there are no Armenians left in Artsakh. Azerbaijan is doing all of this with the direct support and involvement of the Republic of Turkey, its population of 90+ million people, and its own corrupt dictator, Recep Erdogan and those countries including Israel that supply sophisticated weapon systems to Azerbaijan. Turkey, a NATO ally, is recruiting and transporting Syrian Jihadists to fight against Armenians with the goal of genocide and Turkish expansionism through the caucuses. Erdogan has stated that Turkey’s goal is to complete their ancestors’ failed attempt to exterminate the Armenian race during the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923. Funds raised through this project will be allocated 100% to assist with the massive immediate humanitarian needs. Any funds remaining will be allocated to reconstruction efforts following a future ceasefire.

On the 27 September, the worst fighting in decades erupted over Nagorno Karabakh. The recent fighting began as helicopter, drone and tank clashes on the line of contact and has escalated with rocket and artillery attacks.

Families have been forced to abandon their homes and flee to bomb shelters.

Since 2001, HALO has been the only international organization working to protect the people of  Artsakh from explosives. They are currently on the ground, providing families that have been forced to flee to shelters with aid and supplies.

Their teams have also taken to the streets to mark and isolate cluster bombs and other explosives so they can be cleared. And as families remain threatened by scattered unexploded items, they are going to shelters and homes, alerting people with how to avoid these hazards.

The threat posed to civilians remains dire and HALO needs support now more than ever. Every donation towards the program in Artsakh will be matched by an anonymous donor.

We are back-to-school and Girls of Armenia Leadership Soccer (GOALS) is getting ready to relaunch its girls soccer leagues. Because of the recent pandemic children have been mostly isolated at home and most after-school activities had been either canceled or moved online. Children have been isolated from each other and haven’t been able to partake in physical activities. We are very eager to bring sports back to regional Armenia and give the opportunity to our girls to get back on the field. As you know health and hygiene education are more relevant than ever. GOALS has developed a new curriculum to ensure that our 80 teams across 8 regions of Armenia are practicing not only a healthy physical lifestyle, and keeping to hygiene norms, but also have a safe space to work on mental health. The topic of health and hygiene is underrated in Armenia, especially among rural communities. We know that by incorporating learning about health and hygiene into our sports activities we will be able to fundamentally improve the lives of over 1000 girls. Our anticipated indirect impact is estimated at over 5000 community members across Armenia. This is your chance to contribute to the overall wellbeing of our girls and Armenia. Your contributions will go towards ensuring our communities have the tools necessary to organize safe and healthy sports activities, this includes, uniforms, sports equipment, medical kits, masks, thermometers, etc. Every dollar you contribute to this project will be matched by our amazing partner. Subject to its rules, funding raised through this campaign will be matched by the EBRD Community Initiative to a maximum of EUR 50,000. The EBRD Community Initiative is a program dedicated to support staff who are engaged with local organizations helping communities in the EBRD countries of operations.