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  • Back Home Again

    BACK HOME AGAIN
    by Sara Khojoyan

    Transitions Online, Czech Republic
    May 10 2006

    Children's centers are replacing orphanages and institutions in
    Armenia, and helping to get children back in the classroom.

    GYUMRI, Armenia | Every day a sister and brother walk through the
    bustle of reconstruction in Gyumri, the main city in Armenia's
    northwestern Shirak region, the poorest in Armenia with a poverty
    rate of nearly 50 percent.

    After school, 15-year-old Parandzem and 10-year-old Levon come to
    town from the nearby village of Akhourian and head to the Center for
    Community Development and Social Support to do their homework, draw,
    or watch television.

    Like most children, Levon plays, runs around, or even brags about
    the progress he's making in his lessons. Seeing how diligently this
    cheerful little boy does his homework, it's difficult to believe that
    he would never have gone to school but for this center.

    "Levon used to go begging. ... His father wouldn't let him attend
    school. Our psychologist worked with the father for two months. After
    a lot of effort we finally managed to persuade him," says Geghanush
    Gyunashyan, the center's director. "When Levon came out dressed in
    his tidy school uniform to go to school for the first time, his father
    got very emotional."

    Photo by Sergey Fidanyan

    At the age of 12, Parandzem started school with her brother. "Levon and
    I are in the fourth grade now. Studying with the little kids doesn't
    bother me; instead, I can read and write now," she says proudly.

    There are five children in their family, but only Parandzem and Levon
    are old enough for school. "They helped two of my children to go to
    school, at least, and that's good," their mother, Alisa Grigoryan,
    says gratefully.

    The Center for Community Development and Social Support in Gyumri,
    founded by UNICEF in 2001, has already helped 150 children considered
    "high risk," with 45 of them currently under the center's care.

    Gyumri, a major industrial city of more than 200,000 people in
    Soviet times, was heavily damaged by the December 1988 earthquake
    that killed an estimated 25,000 people. Scars from the earthquake are
    evident today despite international aid for reconstruction. Efforts
    to rebuild the economy and provide jobs and opportunity have been slow.

    "A family's extreme poverty, parents' unemployment, a child not
    attending school, begging - all these are criteria for being listed
    in the high-risk group," Gyunashyan says. Today in Armenia, there are
    about 1,300 children in state and private orphanages, although about
    60 percent are not orphans. In addition, more than 10,000 children
    attend special schools, about 40 percent of whom are boarders.

    "For a country as small as Armenia, the number of children in
    orphanages is very big," says Naira Avetisyan, manager of UNICEF's
    Children's Rights Protection Project in Armenia. "And for a long time,
    the government, instead of helping poor families so that they wouldn't
    send their children to orphanages, encouraged such institutions."

    Government policy has changed, but parents still need more options.

    "Parents prefer taking their children to orphanages because conditions
    are better there than in their own homes. We tried to find an
    alternative," Avetisyan says.

    That's where the community centers come in.

    BABY STEPS

    UNICEF supports nine such centers in Armenia, addressing slightly
    different needs.

    In Vanadzor and Alaverdi, in the north, the centers help children who,
    for various reasons, are not in school and who have family problems,
    such as parents who do not pay attention to their children's studies
    or keep track of their school attendance.

    Four centers operate in the northeast region of Tavush - in Berd,
    Ijevan, Dilijan, and Noyemberyan. The one in Dilijan is among the first
    centers founded by UNICEF, in 2002. There, disabled children have an
    opportunity to socialize with their peers who do not have disabilities.

    "If a child hasn't started school at the correct age, they do their
    best in the center to help him overcome that psychological barrier. A
    child is provided with elementary knowledge as well as skills to help
    him eventually enter school. Younger children receive help with getting
    ready for school because there is no preschool institution for children
    with disabilities. This way it's easier to start attending school,"
    Avetisyan says.

    The Tavush centers offer physical and psychological therapy, and
    social and legal aid to disabled children as well as disability
    pension registration. And, most importantly, it tries to integrate
    disabled children into society at an early age and raise awareness
    of the problems that disabled children face.

    With UNICEF's support, centers were opened in 2005 in the southern town
    of Masis and in the Avan community in the capital city of Yerevan. In
    Masis most children in the center have serious disabilities and were
    not given the opportunity to attend school.

    They are taught skills, such as weaving or embroidery, that might help
    them contribute eventually to their families' incomes. The center in
    Avan houses younger children with disabilities, mainly ages 3 to 6.

    "These are not called day-care centers because many people associate
    those with care only. The centers encourage the idea of a child staying
    with his or her family. At the same time parents are provided with
    basic instructions on upbringing, care, and rights," Avetisyan says.

    A GROWING NEED ...

    After the earthquake of 1988, the number of at-risk children rose
    considerably, according to Diana Martirosova, a specialist at the
    National Statistics Service. "Today it's children who suffer from
    poverty most," she says.

    Back in Gyumri, one of those children is green-eyed Hovhannes, who
    writes a greeting card to his late mother. "Dear Mother, I want you
    to be happy. I hope that you never get sick or leave me alone: In a
    word, I congratulate you on 8 March," International Women's Day.

    Hovhannes' father left the family when his mother was still alive.

    After she died, his only caregivers were a grandmother and the
    center's workers.

    "I like drawing most," Hovhannes says. He draws what he misses in real
    life - a fairytale, three-story castle, painted in red and orange,
    with open windows. A spruce stands next to the castle, with the two
    peaks of Mt. Ararat, Sis and Masis, in the background.

    Sometimes it's the parents who must be helped before the children
    can be. Fair-haired Gohar is in the second grade, though she should
    be in the third: Her mother kept her out of school for a year so she
    could beg. It took the center's workers a year to convince the mother
    to let Gohar attend school. The center helped her mother register
    for her state allowance and find seasonal employment, and Gohar was
    sent to school. "Today Gohar reads a lesson right after the teacher,"
    says Gayane Sahakyan, a social worker at the center.

    Apart from doing lessons and drawing, children here learn to weave
    tapestries and work with computers.

    Artyom is an Adobe Photoshop fan and has combined a photo of himself
    with those of his favorite car and his favorite actress, Angelina
    Jolie. He was taught the skills by a student volunteer from the Gyumri
    campus of the Yerevan State Academy of Arts.

    "We have 15 to 20 volunteers, as a rule," says director Gyunashyan.

    "But we have fewer paid employees: two psychologists, two sociologists,
    two tutors, a doctor, and a lawyer."

    Artavazd has been in the center since the summer of 2005. He quickly
    became one of the best pupils in the weaving club and a favorite of
    Marine Avetisyan, the teacher.

    "It's especially boys who like weaving," Avetisyan says. "We weave
    three days a week, four hours every time. The purpose, however,
    is not to make them masters but merely to distract them, make them
    forget their family's concerns, as well as those put on their weak
    little shoulders."

    The center's administrators have worries of their own. Gyunashyan's
    first concern is the lack of a permanent home. "We've been renting
    this damp two-story house for $800 a month. It would be great to get
    some support for building a new house for the center," she says.

    Food is another concern. The center gets only 150 drams (U.S. 34 cents)
    to feed each child per day. "We're thankful to the German Red Cross,
    who allocates that money, but it's way too little," she says.

    UNICEF's Naira Avetisyan says, "Such centers are highly effective. In
    the Tavush region, for example, where the centers provide services
    to disabled children and encourage them to live at home, very few
    children are sent to orphanages. The same is true in Gyumri: If it
    hadn't been for the center, most [of the] children would have been
    in orphanages a long time ago."

    Gyunashyan estimates that her center is 60 percent to 70 percent
    effective; only four children have been sent to orphanages in the
    past four years. "But we've managed to withdraw Andranik from there,
    and taken little Siranoush's case to court," she says, recounting
    the stories of these four children one by one.

    ... AN AMBITIOUS PLAN

    What UNICEF has started, the Armenian government plans to expand,
    with 25 such centers slated to open in the next 10 years, according
    to Avetisyan.

    Filaret Berikyan, Armenia's deputy minister of labor and social
    affairs, says serious reforms are under way in the area of children's
    rights and the government is anxious to redirect needy children from
    orphanages and institutions into community centers and foster families.

    "Unlike in the times of the Soviet Union, when orphanages and other
    similar institutions were built for these children, now [the solutions]
    are family-based. Human history has proven that the best place for
    children to grow up is with their family," Berikyan says.

    The first two government centers are being established under a pilot
    program of reform in children's care supported by Japan's Social
    Development Fund.

    One of the centers, in the Ajapnyak district of Yerevan, opened in
    November while still under construction. Through March, staff there
    compiled a database of more than 300 children who fall into the
    high-risk category.

    "We've been working with the first hundred children on the list,"
    says center director Seda Ghaltaghchyan.

    As in UNICEF'S Gyumri center, here a team consisting of a social
    worker, a psychologist, a tutor, and a doctor and lawyer, if necessary,
    works with each child. The center has 20 employees and is guided by
    a governing council that meets monthly.

    "We make headway every month and children are removed from the
    high-risk list. Sometimes 19 children of the 100 are withdrawn,
    sometimes 20 are, and sometimes none are. We keep updating the list,"
    Ghaltaghchyan says.

    The state budget allocates 500 drams for a child's food each day,
    and 2,100 for other expenses. The center gets around 8 million drams
    a month, or $18,000.

    The center in Gyumri, which performs more functions than that in
    Ajapnyak, gets about $15,000 to $20,000 a month, Avetisyan says.

    The second state-financed center will also be in Gyumri, where
    construction is almost complete. A director will be chosen at the
    end of May and the center will open in June.

    Seeing Hovhannes and Gohar on their way to school in the morning,
    few would suspect that these two children, neatly dressed in black
    and white, are in the high-risk group. With help of the day-care
    center in Gyumri, today they are pupils instead of beggars.

    Sara Khojoyan is working on her master's degree in journalism at
    Yerevan State University. She also works as a reporting intern for
    the ArmeniaNow online newspaper.

    http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl ?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=166& amp;NrSection=3&NrArticle=17038

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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