St. Regis Hotel Benefit on Thursday, October 20th for Children Of Armenia Fund

Bringing Hope and Prosperity to Rural Armenia

by Christopher Atamian, The Armenian Reporter International

“The difference between Yerevan and rural Armenia is like night and day,” businessman Garo Armen explains, his face concentrated and expressive. “The former looks like a modern European capital, the latter like a third-world disaster.”  Many people have noticed the plight of Armenian villagers, forced to live in unsanitary hovels with no access to education or employment since the Soviet Union collapsed, and there is an immediate urgency to take  action to remedy the situation.

“It’s not a glamour project,” notes Alice Sarayderian, one of the board members and hands-on workhorses in this newly-created COAF, short for Children of Armenia Fund: “You don’t get to build  a great church or museum—which are also great projects. Instead, you get the satisfaction of knowing that you’re helping poor people get back on their feet and helping Armenia to prosper.”  On October 20th, the entire Armenian community and many non-Armenians get to come together at the St. Regis Hotel for a gala COAF dinner in order to help expand the program beyond the village of Karakert, the first of 200 on COAF’s ambitious list. At $1 to $1.5 million  per village, COAF plans to raise anywhere from $200 to $300 million. An economic multiplier effect should ensure that the prosperity created in the 200 villages will spread to the remaining 700 that make up Armenia’s countryside.

“We are unique in our approach,” explains Armen. “COAF rebuilds everything, from the plumbing and sanitation facilities to the hospitals and schools.” Armen was visibly shaken several years ago after visiting Karakert, a small village half-way between Gyumri and Etchmiadzin: “These were first worlders living like third worlders. People who could read Pushkin in Russian and Sevag in Armenian but who had no toilets, no jobs and not enough food to feed their families.”

Hence the creation of COAF. Armen understood that many Diaspran philanthropic funds such as the AGBU, The Armenia Fund, and others were doing good work in Armenia.  But none had put a team on the ground in Armenia’s villages to take a total approach:

“Everything had to be changed from the ground up, from the housing, to sanitation, to education,” explains Armen. Armen then organized democratic town meetings in Karakert and asked the Karakertsis to elect their own leadership council. He then asked them to isolate the 5 main things that needed improvement. Not surprisingly, the results were as follows: water, employment, schooling, sanitation and irrigation and finally, medical services. Armen and his COAF team quickly went into action.

Using his business contacts, Armen enlisted the help of no less than the United Nations and the World Bank.

Later, at a 2004 St. Regis hotel fundraiser, a $1 million donation from the Feinberg family of New York capped a historic $1.5 million fundraising effort.

Within a year, a brand new school was built for $180,000, with running water, sanitary facilities, a gym, science labs, and 24/7 heating. When Armen next visited the village, he was pleased to see true to their stereotypical entrepreneurial spirit, the Armenian villagers had set up two factories on their own, one to produce furniture for the new school, the other window panes, all to top standards.

To date, COAF has delivered on all its promises, and plans to finish Karakert with money raised at last year’s Gala dinner at the St. Regis.

“If we can renovate 200 village completely, Armenia will look like Switzerland within a decade—or perhaps even better, Ireland,” Armen says, referring to the Irish economic miracle that transformed a country once renowned for its famines and potato blights into the second wealthiest European country. On his most recent trip to Karakert, Armen was told by a teacher at the town school that some of the students still run to the outhouse in back by reflex when they need to go to the bathroom. You see, they had never seen running water before, so school officials actually had to show the children how to use the new facilities.  On the new school’s opening day, parents brought flowers for the teachers and the entire student body was dressed to the nines, looking like so many private school children in the United States or Europe. Considering the conditions that they had lived in for the past decades, this type of pride bodes well for the rural revolution that Armen and his team from COAF have undertaken. So on October 20th, please come help  COAF rebuild Armenia stone by stone, village by village. The children of Armenia are waiting.