Economic opportunities for rural Armenian communities are scarce.  These opportunities along Armenia’s border frontier with Azerbaijan are even more limited.  To help address this important issue, The Paros Foundation has launched several initiatives aimed at job creation in rural communities.  This includes planting more than 800 fruit-bearing trees, establishing a large scale rabbit farm, fertilizer production, small animal feed production and honey production.  These economic development opportunities are all administered under the auspices of the Aygepar Business Incubator, which provides rent-free space, sanitary conditions and marketing and technical expertise to local businesses.

The Paros Foundation has launched a high quality honey production just outside of the village of Verin Tsakhavan in the Berd area of Armenia’s Tavush Region with 50 bee hives.  The immediate goal is to grow this production to 200 bee hives over the next two years to create commercially viable quantities of high-altitude, raw honey.  This will lead to expanded job creation and opportunities in the market place as all components of this important project are manufactured locally in the Armenian market including hives, bee families, wax starter sheets and concrete block stands.  Even the glass jars for sale are manufactured in Armenia!

One complete hive and bee colony costs $250. New hives and colonies will be added to expand the total number in the spring. Individuals that sponsor a complete hive will receive one jar of honey from this year’s harvest, a certificate indicating what number hive was established with their support and the opportunity to personalize their honey jar. Please follow this link to personalize your jar of honey: https://forms.gle/Wv1ejDr8QL4yVo3PA

The village of Hatsik is located about ten minutes from the city of Armavir in Armenia’s Armavir region about 60 kilometers from Yerevan. Hatsik is home to 2,560 residents. The village has one school with 260 children in attendance. In 2013, The Paros Foundation and its SERVICE Armenia program began the renovation of one of the two buildings on campus. Over the course of four years, renovations were made to three bathrooms, twelve classrooms, the hallways, gym and locker room. The facade of the building was also repaired. The school’s auditorium needs to be renovated to facilitate school gathers and performances. This renovation will include the replacement of the windows and doors, rebuilding of the stage, new electrical, new paint and new seating. The renovation will also include the cosmetic renovation of the hall immediately in front of the entrance to the auditorium.

The site of the Terchoonian Home, located in Gyumri Armenia, holds great historical significance. It was an orphanage during the Armenian Genocide managed by the Near East Relief, a social and economic development organization established in 1915. It later became a military headquarters for the Soviet army. In 1988, the building was heavily damaged during the devastating Spitak Earthquake. Due to support by the Terchoonian Family, and the hard work and dedication of the late Archbishop Mesrob Ashjian and Romen Gozmoyan, the building was purchased and renovated. The Terchoonian Home Orphanage opened its doors again in 2003 through the generous donation by the Terchoonian Family honoring the late Vahan Terchoonian. The Terchoonian Family chose Gyumri as it was the city Terchoonian found refuge in after escaping from Turkey, before eventually immigrating to the United States.

Today, the orphanage houses 84 children and operates a school that serves a total of 115 children with 54 individuals on staff. This historic building, specifically its third floor, is in need of emergency repairs prior to another harsh Gyumri winter. Sponsorship of this project will help urgently complete renovations, which include repairs to fix several leaks in the roof, replacement of 32 windows on the third floor (several of which have been boarded up because there is no glass in them or they don’t close), new doors for the third floor corridor (at each staircase), balcony, bedrooms and classrooms, and new carpeting for the rooms with water damage where children stay. Furthermore, the exterior walls on the third floor are made of asbestos panels, which have been poorly installed, are not water tight and have caused the third floor carpeting in the rooms to become damp and foul over time. The asbestos panels will be replaced with a new exterior wall that will be weather/water tight. Additional repairs are also needed, such as repairs to water pipes and partial renovation of two bathrooms (including drain pipes and the addition of a shower stall), but will be addressed after the above urgent needs are met. These renovations to the orphanage are important to not only keep the children and staff safe, warm and protected from illnesses that may arise due to poor conditions, but also to help preserve a building that holds such significance for Armenian history in its walls.

In 2013, a Peace Crops volunteer first submitted the Zorakan village school as a potential Paros project. The school needs an extensive remodel. The school’s campus includes a large two story building which houses the While the Tavush regional government recently installed a new roof at the school, we need to complete the renovation. The scope of work includes installing a new heating system, new windows and doors in 14 classrooms, three new bathrooms (teachers, boys and girls), renovations throughout two hallways (upstairs and downstairs), new furniture, new flooring installation, paint and electrical work. The school will be renovated in two phases.  Phase one will completely renovate the second floor and will include the installation of the heating system. The school campus also includes a second large building that use to house the gymnasium, but this building must be torn down and rebuilt due to structural problems. This project will focus only on the building which houses the classrooms.

The remote village of Zorakan located in Armenia’s Tavush region has a population of about 1,000 people. It was populated by Azeris until 1988 and had a different name, Verin Kerpilu. During an armed conflict, the Azeri population fled the village and Armenian refuges from Azerbaijan were placed in the village. At the time, the entire village population was refugees from Azerbaijan; they later changed the name to Zorakan in honor of two marshals from their home village Chardakhlu. There are approximately 270 households, most of the villagers cannot find work outside their homes and survive by making a living from their land, from their gardens and fruit trees. Some of the husbands (and single men) find work in Russia and are gone much of the year, leaving their wives to raise the families. There are 135 children who attend the secondary school along with 26 teachers and technical workers. Along with the school, the village has a mayor’s office, a post office, four small stores, a health post and a culture house.

The budget to renovate and furnish this two story building of the school is $125,000.

Phase one efforts will include renovations to the second floor classrooms hallway. Funding for phase one is $55,000. Second phase work will be determined based on the response from the government regarding their participation.

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.