Since May, the YWCA and I have been working on a job training program. It’s been a labor of love, requiring a lot of attention to detail and mutual understanding taking my cultural integration to a completely different level. Now that we’ve fixed the accounting mistakes and turned in the final report, please allow me to rave about a project I’m thrilled about.
Long before I arrived in Armenia, the ladies at the YWCA had created a handicraft training project in attempt to add some possibilities of income generation to women in the Noyemberyan region. They wanted to teach women how to start their own businesses or save their families money with trainings on how to sew to make clothes, table cloths and slippers. In conjunction with this, they’d hold resume writing classes and interview preparation classes so when these women were qualified they could take the next step to getting full time employment. They had sent the project proposal to the US Embassy in Yerevan, but it was rejected because it did not focus on ‘promoting democratic principles.’ There was nothing wrong with the idea, it just wasn’t a good fit for their priorities.
Shortly after I showed up in August 2013, they showed me the project and made it clear that this was something they really wanted to do. It was an intimidating project to start with so we put it on the backburner while I got my feet wet with our nutrition project and fundraising for our windows. In April, we were ready to start with our Noyemberyan Job Training Program. (Super creative name huh?)
We kept everything good about the project and added some additional ideas. We kept handicraft trainings but added computer classes. We met with the Unemployment Center of Noyemberyan who agreed to help our project by advertising what we were doing and providing us a list of people who would be interested. We also worked with the Business Bureau by adding what was my favorite aspect of the grant. How to you generate jobs? Well… lots of ways. But one way is to strengthen existing businesses and help entrepreneurs develop a good foundation for companies invested in in-demand sectors. So we added business classes that covered budgeting, marketing, and business planning. We also partnered with banks who agreed to send representatives to a finance forum to answer questions about small business loans and how to budget personally and professionally.
Our project got approved in August and it has been full steam ahead since then.
It is not easy to keep motivation going for 6 months, but during that time we witnessed so much change. We saw people create their first e-mail classes and make a word document for the first time. One woman who attended our sewing classes was going to make sheet sets to fund her child’s cancer treatments. My English club grew dramatically and I got to personally see unemployed people meet business owners and talk about their need and saw business owners actively participate with banks and the Business Bureau, many for the first time. 122 people attended classes and I think it’s safe to say each one of them learned at least a little something! All of this happened for $1,751. So little money goes such a long way here.
This is my last major project here and in completing the project, I felt both a sign of relief and sadness. I’ve learned so much just in doing this project alone, I wish I could have participated in this project on a community wide scale with much more macro-level involvement to see what impact we could create.
It is not easy to keep motivation going for 6 months, but during that time we witnessed so much change. We saw people create their first e-mail classes and make a word document for the first time. One woman who attended our sewing classes was going to make sheet sets to fund her child’s cancer treatments. My English club grew dramatically and I got to personally see unemployed people meet business owners and talk about their need and saw business owners actively participate with banks and the Business Bureau, many for the first time. 122 people attended classes and I think it’s safe to say each one of them learned at least a little something! All of this happened for $1,751. So little money goes such a long way here.
This is my last major project here and in completing the project, I felt both a sign of relief and sadness. I’ve learned so much just in doing this project alone, I wish I could have participated in this project on a community wide scale with much more macro-level involvement to see what impact we could create.
Before signing off for this week, I have one more thing. I have mentioned my friend Alina on here many times. She was in my “Day in the Life of a PCV” video, came with me to Tbilisi, played an integral role in the World AIDS Day events around the country, helped in every aspect of this project, and she has been a treasured friend of mine during my time in Noyemberyan. A few months ago she took a huge step and applied for EVS (European Volunteer Service.) This is the European equivalent of Peace Corps. As we all knew she would, she was accepted and took off about two weeks ago for a small, rural town near Bergen, Norway. She won’t return to Armenia until long after I leave but it would be unfair to our friendship to let her exit in my life go unnoted in this chronicle since she is such a big part of my Armenian life.
Best of luck Alina! I miss you already!
Best of luck Alina! I miss you already!