What were we up to

An End of Year address by Gevorg Ter-Gabrielyan

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

As End of Year approaches, I wanted to stop for a minute and think about what did we do together in 2009.

I am happy to report that thanks to the generous support of our donors, we were able to accomplish some of the most challenging projects. We are finishing our Freedom of Expression (FoE) project, generously supported by UK Government. We have produced several films, made by best Armenian documentary makers. If you want to watch them, they are on our website. The English-language auditorium is advised to watch the ‘Parallel Reality' in order to understand what the project is about. The Armenian-language auditorium can start from watching ‘Infiltration'. I am mentioning these two films because they are, in my opinion, an important accomplishment in themselves, in addition to conveying information about FoE in Armenia. We finished a major research on FoE and we learned how controversial the situation with FoE is. We run a series of talk shows where we demonstrated the films and discussed FoE, on Yerkir TV, with the help of Mr Boris Navasardyan of Yerevan Press Club. Our discussions were controversial and important, and you can ask our staff for copies of the talk shows. Hamaspyur system broadcasted films and discussions in the regions of Armenia. The entire package of materials goes to Yerevan State Linguistic University (YSLU) to become a study course of FoE for Masters students. We learned that FoE is much less studied globally than Freedom of Information, or censorship. We wanted to help the Armenian society to overcome the huge conflict and divide which has emerged after March 1, 2008. We also wanted to make sure that FoE issues are at the forefront of the attention of the public, government and international community. Now Ombudsman is finishing his analysis of the Armenian legislation re the situation with FoE in Armenian legal system, in partnership with Counterpart International. This is a highly welcome step in the same direction. We wanted to give opportunity to make films to Armenian talents, and we are happy that such people as Ara Shirinyan, Tigran Paskevichyan, Suren Ter-Grigoryan, Tigran Xzmalyan were among our film-makers.

 

Since I mentioned YSLU, let me tell you also that within our Europe program we developed a strategy of reform for YSLU under the light of the Bologna process. It is a challenge to take a university which existed still in the Soviet times and is in a midst of a reform, at the time when a controversial higher education reform is taking place in Armenia, and to accelerate its efforts. We feel convinced that this project is going to be a success. The business of higher education is thriving in Armenia. With great leading professors and students, after the reform YSLU will become one of the most developed modern universities in Armenia. We will continue on working with it next year.

 

Within our Europe program we also engaged with other leading NGOs in Armenia on filling the gap between the public, civil society, and government re the European agendas. We took part in the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, where four out of six Eurasia network offices took part, from Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia. We helped to establish a loose coalition of NGOs working on Eastern Partnership and European agendas, and now we will be working on building a platform of European agendas for civil society organizations in Armenia. We also commissioned two researches on European Union, one for the general public and one for the younger generation. Both are ready and will be published soon, and we will disseminate and discuss them widely in the regions of Armenia.

 

When we are talking about research, we should remember our Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC): the fourth round of household research, Data Initiative (DI) was successfully conducted in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. In addition, CRRC conducted several other surveys, such as the anti-corruption survey for USAID Mobilizing Action Against Corruption (MAAC) project. Researches are available on EPF and CRRC websites. We initiated Stop Corruption, an on-line magazine, www.stopcorruption.am and presented it to Sisian Development Center, a member of MAAC network, to develop and maintain. We hope that it will become sustainable, expand its readers base and continue on functioning in 2010.

 

This report will be incomplete if I forget to mention our Crossing Borders projects, and in particular Armenia-Azerbaijan and Armenia-Turkey dialogue projects. Within both, we are working on reducing media bias, bringing together journalists who develop contacts with each other. As a result, they build on those contacts and do joint projects together. We developed a manual for conflict-sensitive reporting to be published soon. We supported large-scale Town Hall Meetings (THM) on Armenia-Turkey relations where about 1300 people took part, implemented by International Center for Human Development (ICHD). We supported translation of Turkish articles into Armenian and many other initiatives, such as the publication of an album of Armenia-Turkey photographs done by Patker Company. The research on the status of Armenian migrants in Turkey, supported by Norwegian government, is of a particular importance. Soon it will be available on our website.

 

A few days ago 13 Turkish leading journalists, media professionals, and editors arrived to Armenia for 4 days, had meetings and discussions with officials, media and civil society. Hopefully they will take back the message that Armenia is ready for border opening, and this will positively impact the discussions around the ProtocoIs on both sides. This breakthrough media project became possible thanks to a generous grant from the Norwegian government. In 2010 we are going to accelerate our Armenian-Turkish projects and do even more, thanks to additional USAID support.

 

Our Youth Bank project is in the third year of its development. Youth groups from all over Armenia work together on small-scale voluntary projects. We have a library repaired in Vanadzor, an ancient religious monument cleansed in Kharaglukh village of Vayots Dzor, a school and medical college yards renovated in Martuni and Vardenis. We will have 20 more projects in half a year's time. Jinishyan Memorial Fund supported us with a crucial contribution to expand our Youth Bank network. The youth groups meet with their counterparts from Georgia and Azerbaijan, build links, and learn working with each other within our Getting Involved project with Theodor-Heuss-Kolleg (THC), supported by Bosch Foundation.

 

From Open Door grants, I would like to also mention our grant to A1+. For the first time, SMS TV news via mobile phone networks are broadcast in Armenia. We give less Open Door grants. They are exclusively for innovative and strategically important undertakings, which will have a definite sustainable impact. Our grants now are highly competitive. Another example is the publication of commentaries to the Local Government Law by Mr Sos Gimishyan, a renowned expert. The commentaries should become pocket books for all LG employees.

 

We will continue on considering Open Door grants in the cutting edge areas of development, strategically important for Armenia. The problem of internships was addressed by us, again with YSLU, on a small scale, but it resulted in Vivacell concluding agreements with YSLU and 3 additional universities for large-scale internship program. We hope, as a next stage, to make sure that internships are institutionalized in Armenia and affect the higher education curriculum, which becomes more practice-oriented, as well as the training capacities of employers. We need a legislative change to make this happen.

 

Our major accomplishment, alongside the attempts to build corporate social investment culture and to develop social entrepreneurship, has been the development of the draft Endowment Law. Having an Endowment Law is a sustainable strategy for the businesses' support to NGOs. The draft Law, done by Grant Thornton Amyot, is now being widely discussed and is getting positive feedback from a variety of stakeholders, including the Government of Armenia.

 

We are looking forward to new challenges in 2010. The Armenian-Turkish process is one of the major areas where breakthrough is expected. We hope that new opportunities will be found also in Armenian-Azerbaijani civil society contacts. We plan to support an Armenian-Georgian dialogue, which will help to accelerate contacts, projects, exchanges between these two neighboring countries in media, business, culture, and European dimension. We hope that Eastern partnership will give us opportunity to build a more secure South Caucasus. We believe that only if we address the ‘external' challenges will we be able to build sustainable democracy, Freedom of Expression, and market economy in Armenia. To study the interlinkages between these factors-conflict, democracy and market, we have developed our Thought Leadership webpage, http://www.epfound.am/english/thought-leadership.html where strategies and recommendations to government, civil society and businesses are being summarized on these and other important issues.

 

We thank our donors and we ask new donors to engage. We work for sustainable change in Armenia, and we believe we are on a right truck. If you want to take part in the challenging work of changing Armenia for better, please join our efforts.

 

Happy New Year!

 

Share |