What draws Birthright volunteers to Armenia

by Lisa Manookian

Published: Sunday January 22, 2012

Clockwise from top are: Nicholas Avedisian-Cohen, Sanan Shirinian, Greg Bilazarian, and Allegra Garabedian.

Yerevan - A new wave of benevolence is being driven by young Armenian adults who have recently traveled to Armenia via Birthright Armenia, the vehicle through which many arrive in their quest to serve our homeland and her people.

Over 90 volunteers have participated in 2011, serving in both the public and private sectors and taking advantage of all their cultural inheritance has to offer. So moved are they by their experiences that several have extended their initial internships beyond the minimum two-month stay.

Why did they decide to take the time to volunteer in a foreign country, why Armenia, and why now? What did they discover about our homeland and her people? And what impact does that have on their personal desires and ambitions?

Allegra Garabedian was planning a visit for some time. Growing up in Portland, Maine, she didn't speak Armenian, knew little of her culture and felt much like an outsider. Having studied abroad, she knew she loved traveling, experiencing foreign cultures, and learning new languages. Yet, despite her heritage, Armenia was the most foreign of all places she visited.

She arrived in May 2011 with no language skills, no knowledge of Armenia's political history, and no concrete expectations. Aside from a handful of her grandmother's Armenian delicacies, the culture was new to her as to any tourist. So, traveling to Armenia was a completely new experience for Allegra and she chose to do so because she wanted to push herself in a way that wasn't possible in the academic world. She was the first person in her family to go back to Armenia since her great-grandparents left during the Genocide.

Initially signed up for a six-month internship, Allegra decided to stay an additional six months. Allegra was assigned to a small NGO in Gyumri called Historic Armenian Houses. She transcribed interviews and worked on several projects to promote tourism in Gyumri, taking photos to turn into postcards, assisting with the start-up of a bed and breakfast service with several local families, and helping write brochures and organizing tours for tourists staying in Gyumri. She also tutored French twice a week.

Currently, she is working three days a week at the Manana Youth Center, an after-school program for children interested in studying photography, filmmaking, animation, and journalism. She teaches English there twice a week and edits grants, grant-reports, the English language section of their newsletter, and anything else that they need help with. She also spends a lot of time scanning and archiving film for the photography department.

In addition to her work with Manana, Allegra spends one day a week assisting Birthright Armenia with social media, and another day doing transcriptions for Historic Armenian Houses. Still in the middle of her internship, she plans to begin meetings for an English language club for a new organization.

Allegra says that the one thing she has taken from this experience is a sense of humility for how little she knew about how people live - outside of the United States and outside of her home. "Seeing the struggles of the people here, and realizing how completely impossible it would be for me to even try to understand them, has given me that."

For Sanan Shirinian, Armenia is not a foreign country. Having volunteered twice before, she says "it is my homeland, therefore it is my responsibility and my honor to volunteer and serve here." She feels the time she is serving is a much more rewarding experience than spending time as a tourist and decided to postpone graduate school for one year to allow herself some quality time to truly get to know Armenia.

Sanan is in the fifth month of her internship, working with the Hrayr Maroukhian Foundation, a policy institute that promotes social-democratic solutions for various issues in Armenia. From the onset, she was given the project of producing a six-part mini series about women in Armenia. Her daily tasks ranged from researching topics to covering 40-minute segments, arranging meetings with women who were needed for the show and interviewing different women throughout the city about the challenges they faced and their achievements in the country. She has also organized a social-democracy training seminar and a conference to present policy papers about social reforms in Armenia.

Sanan believes in the importance of young diasporans seeing the country as much more than a summer getaway and during her year-long stay is seeking avenues which will allow her to make a difference. The timing was perfect because she recently graduated with a B.A. and didn't have any other commitments. Though Sanan is still in the midst of evaluating her journey, living life day-to-day and integrating with society as much as possible, she is certain that her future will involve Armenia.

The idea to stop working and put on hold a professional and personal life back in the states, came to Nicholas Avedisian-Cohen, because of Birthright Armenia. "I was going through a stretch of unemployment and not excited about the job prospects on the horizon. Independent of that, and of the fact of my Armenian heritage, I found the prospect of coming to Armenia in particular to be interesting and meaningful. I imagined that a lot of important work could be done to make a difference here because the country and its institutions are so young and because people live in real need. This was all part of my thinking at the time of applying to Birthright Armenia and deciding on a longer term stay." Nicholas wanted to give himself enough time to experience different facets of life in Armenia and make a connection to the people and the place. He was also interested in meeting other young diasporans because he was not raised in an Armenian community and did not have a strong sense of diasporan culture.

Having recently returned from six months in Armenia, Nicholas was exposed to much of the culture and character of the people there and got a sense of the critical issues facing the country. Along the way, he met many people whose resilience and personal strength he came to admire as well as friendships that cross cultural and language barriers. "One thing I was happy to discover is how easy it was to put myself out there and make these connections in Armenia. The people I worked with, lived with, and encountered daily, all had a generosity of spirit and an eagerness to work with and get to know me. On the whole, people were extremely accessible. This was heartening as a diasporan who had never been here before and hadn't a sense of the relationship between the diaspora and the citizens of Armenia. But there were also things it was difficult and important to see as a diasporan. For all the good work being done in Armenia by locals and diasporans, there is a huge social disparity and confusion as to where society is heading. I found Armenia to be a society with many identity issues. I am not simply referring to the very real East/West, developed/developing world complex, but more generally to the idea that Armenians express themselves as feeling constrained by their circumstances frequently. They are, of course, but Armenia also has every path open to it as a nation. It is so young and changing so quickly. And it has been exposed to everything over the course of history. Living here, I came to feel this sense of momentousness, despite complacency, disenfranchisement, and sense of hopelessness that I sometimes encountered."