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  • Locals aid Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia

    StarNewsOnline.com, North Carolina
    July 28 2012


    Locals aid Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia


    By Judy Smith
    Special to the StarNews

    Editor's Note: Dave and Judy Smith are retired Kure Beach residents
    currently serving a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in Armenia. This
    story is one of their periodic updates from the field.

    It has been a full year since David and I arrived in Armenia to begin
    our service as volunteers with the U. S. Peace Corps. On that early
    misty morning of June 4, 2011, we stood in awe as the sun rose above
    Mt. Ararat. Little did we know of what experiences awaited us.

    We've written about living with host Armenian families, studying a
    difficult foreign language, adjusting to wide cultural differences and
    finally moving to our own apartment in Dilijan. Now, David and I are
    engaged in what we volunteered to do.

    My primary assignment is teaching English as a foreign language while
    David works in community and business development.

    One of my projects involves lessons concerning dental health. In one
    class, all but a few students had experienced dental pain. Two
    students admitted to being in pain that day. Only one third of the
    students in another class claimed to have brushed their teeth that
    morning. Many children and adults exhibit decayed or missing teeth and
    preventive dental care seems rare.

    Recently, members of the Retired Nurses of Wilmington and participants
    in the Women on Wednesday (WOW) continuing education class at the
    University of North Carolina Wilmington collected and sent several
    hundred toothbrushes, tubes of toothpaste and packets of floss.
    Students and needy community adults are overwhelmed with this
    generosity as they listen to my lesson and receive their new supplies.

    An exemplary Peace Corps project is managed by Caroline Lucas, who's
    from Cary, and other volunteers who serve in Berd, near the border
    with Azerbaijan. Rural women at the Berd Women's Resource Center make
    teddy bears by hand and sell them online through Kickstarter. Peace
    Corps volunteers have helped train these women in sound business
    practices and money management, thus encouraging the women to earn
    their own money for the first time in their lives. The Berd Bears are
    becoming popular around the world and even inspired a children's
    cartoon series by the same name.

    Talin has a music school but its building is run-down and the
    available instruments are in poor condition. There is no appropriate
    place in which to hold performances. Peace Corps volunteer Brian
    Bokhart, a professional musician before joining the Peace Corps, has
    partnered with local organizations to initiate renovation of the
    building and to purchase new instruments. A celebratory concert is
    planned at the Talin Music School in September.

    Susan Linden, Peace Corps volunteer and English teacher in
    Noyemberyan, worked with her community to plan and develop a
    greenhouse where students could study agri-science and business
    management. The greenhouse is heated by waste heat from the school's
    existing boiler system. Funds raised from sale of produce are used to
    provide educational supplies to underprivileged students.

    My husband David's work involves helping to write grants for his
    partner organization, with the recent success of a grant that funded
    the organization to monitor national congressional elections held in
    May. This grant provided an avenue of scrutiny so that fair and
    transparent elections could be held in the region, including in our
    town of Dilijan.

    As David and I begin our second year in Armenia, we are planning a
    garden, including bee hives, at my technical college to provide income
    for the cooking program, which is badly underfunded. That same college
    offers a sewing curriculum, yet there is no budget for fabric. Thanks
    to the interest of Karel Dutton of Wilmington and the generosity of
    Paula Veltz, Dutton's friend and a quilting enthusiast from Leland, a
    contribution of fabric has been shipped to the college. The fabric
    will be turned into a future sewing project with items then sold to
    fund the purchase of additional fabric for hands-on training in
    sewing.

    It has been busy, challenging and sometimes harsh here in Armenia, but
    we and our fellow volunteers survive and continue to work on a variety
    of small and large projects in addition to those described above.
    Success will occur for each of these projects if they are long-lived
    and continue to provide a positive impact, through the work of
    Armenians, after Peace Corps volunteers return home.

    http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20120728/ARTICLES/120729687?Title=Locals-aid-Peace-Corps-volunteers-in-Armenia

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