End of Year Address

 Dear Partners, Donors, Team, and Public!

2011 was a particularly opportune period for EPF in Armenia - thanks to large-scale grants from USAID, for the ‘Support to Armenia-Turkey Rapprochement' (SATR) and ‘Alternative Resources in Media' (ARM) projects, and from SIDA for a large segment of our programs, we were able to design and implement new interventions and projects, and support a variety of activities.

Our Europe Program disseminated the Hello, Europe book in 11 communities.  For us, producing a publication is just one step - disseminating it properly and facilitating the internalization of its content by beneficiaries is what makes a publication project an impactful success. 650 young people took part in our seminars, which were led by renowned experts in European values and policies Nvard Manasyan, Tigran Matosyan, Marine Manucharyan and Tigran Tshorokhyan.

Three policy analysis papers on the issues relevant for the Eastern Partnership and EU-Armenia negotiations are now available on our webpage - a project on alternative energy, an analysis of the need to mainstream environmental legislation, and an analysis of barriers to external trade.

Via the Youth Bank, we announced opportunities for small-scale community change projects on issues relevant to Europe. Here is the list, including projects on disseminating the European approaches to minority issues, promoting the bicycle as an ecological means of transport and more.  

The Freedom of Expression (FoE) and Media Program achieved new heights thanks to the ARM project. We conducted, via CRRC, a large-scale piece of research into media issues. We are building Info-tuns (Info-houses) in the regions. Please check the web sites of the Vanadzor, Martuni, Gyumri, Armavir and Goris Infotuns as well as the Info-Gyugh (an all-Armenia Info-Village) blog, which make up our network of Infotuns. Our aim is to make the general public, particularly the youth, new- and alternative media-literate on a large scale, and to give opportunities for particularly active citizens to become citizen journalists.

The Article 27 talk show had 17 episodes broadcast on Yerkir TV this year. It talked about European values, anti-corruption, Armenia-Azerbaijan and Armenia-Turkey relations, as well as Freedom of Expression. The biggest amount of viewers was registered for the May 11 talk show on Armenia-Azerbaijan issues, when 26,063 people watched the program. We have received feedback calls from citizens, which have demonstrated that we touch upon important issues and that society cares about them. Since the show is broadcast via satellite, we have also received feedback from other countries.

One of the major issues facing Armenia today is the need for second-level reflection and discussion - what is lacking is not so much primary level texts (be it scholarship or literature) as much as secondary-level texts of critique, analysis, appreciation, and valuation. We supported a competition for analysis of Armenian literature, to see if it has touched upon the values of Freedom of Expression and Democracy and, if yes, in what ways. The aim was to rejuvenate interest in Armenian literature and its analysis, highlighting its significance even today. Eight papers were produced and generated a lively debate at presentations. The analyses of Zabel Yesayan's prose, or of the new wave of modern prose, the ‘army short stories', demonstrate how acute the desire of Armenian literature is to be relevant and to aim at freedom.  Here is the link to the papers.

Our Youth and Community Development Program achieved particular successes - in addition to the Europe-related small grant circle, the Youth Banks (YB) accomplished one general development grant circle (see the projects). They evolved into Turkey, via our SATR project, bringing the Youth Bank methodology to the disadvantaged youth there. The project is growing, more and more youth in Armenia are joining the YB movement, and our total number of beneficiaries has reached over a thousand in 2011. This project comes to prove that the youth are interested in volunteer work, in being equal decision-makers in their communities, and in active public position.

Our Armenia-Turkey Program evolved in particularly difficult circumstances - the relations between the two governments are frozen. But our partners and beneficiaries demonstrated that there are some very strong interest groups, such as the media, businesses and civil society, who want to build trust and overcome diplomatic barriers. We are building alliances with them across the divide - they are advocating for the governments to come back to dialogue and resolve the issues. It was a particularly rewarding experience to learn once more how significant business is as a force for peace. There are significant forces in Turkey, such as business communities, including in Van and Diyarbakir, who want change.

Our ‘Fourth Wave' Facebook page is evolving steadily. It now has 260 members, and enjoys respect as a fair forum for postings and discussions on Armenia-Turkey issues.

Our cooperation with partners in Turkey has resulted in several groundbreaking, though modest, joint undertakings. For instance, Anadolu Kultur partnered with Yerkir Media to produce two films about April 24, both shot on that very day - the Turkish Director Cigdem Mater came to Armenia on that date and filmed, probably historically for the first time for Turkey, the Genocide commemoration ceremonial at Tsitsernakaberd.

The joint Yerevan-Istanbul Pechakucha Night was a fun and energetic way of establishing links between Armenian and Turkish young creative professionals.

Thanks to the funding primarily from the UK, we were able to continue our dialogue of youth and new media users across the Armenia-Azerbaijan divide. We brought together 50 people through 7 meetings in Tbilisi. They came up with 20 joint projects and are working together despite divisions and differences in opinion. We are establishing the ground to support any genuine peace process, whenever it starts.

Please watch the joint cartoons produced within this project and read the joint short novel, written by Ara Nedolyan and Nikki Kazimova.

We also achieved new heights in grant-making. Thanks to our donors, we were able to give grants to our partners. Grants were given for clearly identifiable pieces of work, with an element of innovation in them, for projects which could become sustainable and have an impact by themselves, even if no more funding would come in afterwards.

Grants allow us to expand our partnership base, move into the areas where we have not worked before and share our opportunities with civil society. Our grants become a way to incrementally build up partners' work quality and their anti-corruption procedures as well as to maximize the impact of their projects.

In 2011, we issued in total about 80 grants of a variety of sizes. An example of a successful Open Door grant is the individual tourism package development for the Martuni region. It turns out that even such areas in Armenia which have been wrongly considered as less attractive for tourism have a huge amount of attractions and opportunities.

Through another project, continuing the appreciation of intellectual and art products, we supported the development of a website for art and literature critique.

Given the situation in the army and accidents there, we supported the investigative journalism of these issues. Via the ARM project, we supported media projects such as I-report, badu (a secondary information impact maximizer), ecological news, armcomedy; etc.

The film on anti-corruption reform in Georgia, produced by our long-term partners Tigran Paskevichyan and Ara Shirinyan, became a hit. The project on the 1946-1948 repatriation, touching upon one of the most painful points in our history, helped us to understand how much transparency is still lacking in our society - transparency should start from history and national archives.

A piece of research on plagiarism in higher education identified a clear set of recommendations to overcome that problem. The Hay Santa Foundation continued to support the charity agenda and builds the instinct of reacting to a call for help. In the Social Enterprise program, NGOs set up businesses to make themselves sustainable.

Within our SATR project, our selection panel supported such undertakings as the translation into Turkish of major research on the role of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, a study into the condition of Hamshenis, i.e. ethnic Armenians of Muslim faith, and a film on the journey of an illegal migrant from provincial Armenia to Turkey and back. The list of awarded grants is here.

In a variety of ways, we joined in and co-supported many large-scale public events and projects in Armenia, among which have been the Golden Apricot, the Rolan Bykov and the ReAnimania festivals. We did the first-ever Social Innovation Camp in Armenia with the UNDP, participated in the Hackathon and tried to make sense of a variety of high-tech -trons and -thons:)))

We were active and transparent in the media, fair in decision-making, proactive in dialogue with stakeholders, helpful with evidence-based data (thanks to CRRC) and with doable policy advice. We will continue on working like this. We have been open to criticism and are ready to change, so please do not hesitate to point out to us where have we failed. Some of our learning has been that the professional engagement of civil society with the state and international actors on policy reform is lagging behind because of a lack of skills and capacities among independent actors to formulate advocacy points, doable recommendations and action plans. Next year, we will be addressing that issue.

Successful accomplishments require follow up on the same if not on a larger scale. We work incessantly. We are an active and vibrant team. We always learn. We are grateful to our partners (YPC, Internews, UMBA, ICHD etc.), because they maximize our impact. Let us move together to a serious positive change for Armenia in 2012!

Happy New Year and Season's Greetings.

Gevorg Ter-Gabrielyan

EPF Armenia Country Director

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