Garo Armen, turnaround whiz, finds next target: Armenia’s poor

Mosaicx magazine

Garo Armen is a man on a mission: to save the villages of Armenia.  Meeting Garo is deceptive, as his mild demeanor and accommodating personality belie a tough-minded businessman who has scaled the heights of the pharmaceutical and medical industries as the turnaround whiz who brought Irish giant Elam out of bankruptcy and back on top of a highly competitive field.  Now as CEO of his own company Antigenics, he is planning to market several groundbreaking patents that will provide cures for a wide range of cancers and other diseases.

In spite of the success and respect that Armen has earned, he has not forgotten his roots. Armen was born into a Bolsahai family and educated at Istanbul’s Mekhitarian Lycée (known as Ermeni Pangalti Lisesi in Turkish). He has dedicated whatever free time he has to his family and to Armenia—in fact, his office is piled high with books on every facet of Armenian history and culture.

But his interest in starting a foundation evolved after a 2002 trip to Armenia. During his stay, Armen was stunned by Yerevan: “It looks like Rome. Since the Lincy Foundation renovations were completed, Yerevan has become unrecognizable.” And while disparities in wealth have in fact deepened in the immediate post-Soviet period, Yervantsis seem on the way to middle class comfort, even if at a slower speed than most would wish.

It was the villages of Armenia however that grabbed Armen’s attention the most because the disparity between village life and Yerevan was so enormous. “While the capital was prospering, the villages were a deteriorating. Take Karakert, for example, ”Armen continues, referring to a village on the road from Etchmiadzin to Gyumri. “Families of eight lived in little more than hovels. Some houses were simply lean-tos that used a tree trunk or branch as a support. There was no heating, no hygiene.” Armen continues, “In the town school, the two hundred students all used the same outhouse. Imagine two hundred students all using one hole in the ground as a toilet, with no sanitation or gutters to carry away the waste.” Armen brandishes a picture of a clutch of Karakertsis in winter coats sitting inside a classroom in winter. “Take a look at their faces. They are blue from the cold. Not a single smile anywhere to be seen,” he says in anguish. The worst aspect of the current situation is that Armenian villages were better off when they were being subsidized by the Soviet Union, so that both parents and children are all literate, leading to a situation that Armen calls “first worlders living as third worlders.”

In a nutshell, that is why Armen founded Children of Armenia Fund. 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.  On October 20th this year, COAF held another gala. These two galas should enable COAF to completely rebuild Karakert, the first of 200 on COAF’s ambitious list, and then  move on to its next projects. 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 medical clinics and schools.“ Speaking of Karakert, Armen underlines the foundation’s total and holistic approach: “Everything had to be changed from the ground up, from the housing, to sanitation, to education.” Enlisting the help of the UN and the World Bank, Armen held democratic town hall meetings in Karakert and asked the Karakertsis to elect their own leadership council. He then asked them to isolate the five 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 to work.

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 Karakert, he was pleased to see that—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. “If we can renovate 200 villages 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. Things are looking good for Karakert.  On the new village school’s opening day, parents brought flowers for the teachers and the entire student body was dressed to the nines, like 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 if you’ ve been sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the best way to contribute to Armenia’s future, the children of Karakert are waiting. As a determined Garo Armen says, “Wait and see, we will achieve this through hard work and the determination for the Armenians themselves.”

Given Armen’s past track record, there could be no better recommendation.