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The proprietor of Envoy Hostel, Erik Carapetian, Mr. Carapetian’s Father, Envoy Hostel employee, Emma, and friend of Envoy Hostel, Joe Levonian visited Gavar Special School to visit the children and view the conditions of the school. They brought with them small gifts for the children from Australia.

Envoy Hostel has been a long term supporter of the volunteers of Gavar Special School. In addition to this support, Envoy Hostel gave funds to the roof repair project. The staff and volunteers of Gavar Special School would like to thank Envoy Hostel’s owners and employees for their kind support.

The staff and volunteers are very happy that Envoy Hostel is becoming a community leader showing that through responsible business, many good things will come to Armenia. We wish Envoy Hostel continued success and welcome future cooperation. To show the school’s gratitude, Erik and Joe were presented with handmade needleworks prepared by the students of Gavar Special School.

Last year Gavar Special School had a Green Camp in conjunction with Peace Corps, but this year we have had it without the support of Peace Corps. The camp has been a great success. The camp broke the stigmas of exclusion that Gavar Special School carries due to the post-Soviet culture.

Participating children were taught that not all the students that go the Gavar Special School are weird, strange or crazy. Area students learned that Gavar Special School is a welcoming place with many caring people and the students who attend maybe different but do not warrant exclusion. The camp’s staff is hopeful that terms such as “stupid” or “crazy” has left the lexicon of the participating children and they realize that students of Gavar Special School just need a bit more assistance to learn as they do.

The volunteerism from the Gavar community was amazing! We had more staff than anticipated, and they were comparable to many paid American camp staffs, if not better. The local university students came to help during their finals week which is a major accomplishment as volunteerism is lacking the culture.

We had 44 campers and they were from all over Gavar and even from a few villages, some of the students walked for half and hour to come to the camp because they loved the opportunity to learn about the environment. A small portion of these were students of Gavar Special School. This was a wonderful experience for the staff of Gavar Special School as well as the local community to have a camp that was focused on environment and held in Gavar Special School which allowed for the breaking down of cultural separation barriers.

Special thanks to St. James Catholic Church and family and friends of Peace Corps Volunteer Kayte Williams. Your donations allowed for the purchase of camp materials, snacks and wonderful t-shirts with the slogan “Keep Armenia Clean!”

We have been having a debate between staff, volunteers, friends and supporters of Gavar Special School regarding the strategic plan for the school’s development. It is a difficult to decision regarding where to start but we have agreed on the statement, “Gavar Special School must be a safe, warm and stable building that will be the basis of education reform.” With this agreement, it is obvious the first step is to stop the damage being sustained to the Gavar Special School building due to a roof that is riddled with holes.

You can see in the new pictures of the underside of the roof and the damage that is being caused in the school why the roof is the first problem that must be solved. Once the roof has been replaced, a central heating system will be addressed as the children must be warm. We, the staff and volunteers, are hopeful that other opportunities will present themselves that will allow Gavar Special School to improve its education and health services. Gavar Special School is always looking for ways to participate in new projects as it continues to strive to become the model special needs school in Armenia that will have the ability to educate the more than 700 special needs children in the Gegharkunik Region.

Please view the pictures in the Gavar Special School Gallery and read the captions of the pictures for more details. If you have any questions or concerns, do remember that we really would love to hear from you and your ideas so do use the contact form or the comments section below to share your thoughts.

Celebrations are an important part of the curriculum at Gavar Special School. For special needs children, music and poetry is a wonderful way for them to learn life skills. The Armenian culture has so many wonderful poets and songs that the children enjoy learning new songs and poems to recite.

In honor of International Women’s Day, March 8th, the children preformed songs and poems for all of the teachers, staff and students. This particular celebration was a milestone for two students who recited poetry for the first time in front of a group of people. Previously, these children refused to participate, however with caring persistence of the Gavar Special School Teaching Staff, the children gained enough confidence to participate!

Pictures of the event are in the Gallery. In the pictures, you can see many of the new students who have come to Gavar Special School in the past weeks.

Gavar Special School won a grant for $5,000 from the United States Peace Corps’ Small Project Assistant Grant Project. The project awards up to $5,000 to an organization to carry out a development project. The project that Gavar Special School submitted was to buy 31 new beds so that 31 new students could come to Gavar Special School to study. Currently, the beds are US Army surplus cots which are in awful shape and cannot support the weight of the older students. Using both the cots and the new beds will allow us to accommodate the larger students.

We know there are over 650 children in the Gegharkunik region who have special needs but receive no formal education. New research is beginning to show this number to be much bigger than the official statistics show. At the same time, convincing families to allow their children to study at Gavar Special School is very difficult as the Armenian family culture does not allow for the child to leave the family. While this is understandable, it is also difficult as the special needs children in the family receive no education. If the child is educated and given both basic education and living skills, the family will have a better life as the child in his/her adult years can help the family economically.

We are pleased to announce that we have enrolled 11 new students at Gavar Special School most coming from the Martuni and Sevan village districts. At the same time, we are struggling in convincing the parents of existing students that they need to remain for the full semester at Gavar Special School. Many of the parents will request their children be brought home for a weekend and then they will not return them to Gavar Special School for weeks. This sets the children back and does not allow for continuity in their education plan.

We strive to be sensitive to the family’s need but realize that we cannot demand the return of the child to school. We are hoping to find ways to educate the parents of the special needs children that they can have a productive life if properly educated. Gavar Special School is central to that task of education and as the school improves we hope parents will see that it is a comfortable and productive learning environment. It is a classic “what comes first” question: the education or the environment, but we feel that if we can have a stable and safe environment the education will quickly improve!

In closing, you can see the pictures of the new beds. They cost 65,000 Dram each for the frame and mattress. We thank the United States Peace Corps for awarding Gavar Special School this grant and realizing the need for better sleeping accommodations at the school. We hope to have 65 children on a nightly basis by the end of March staying at Gavar Special School. It is a challenge to keep the kids but slowly we will be successful in changing the culture of exclusion and showing families that it is productive for the child and their future to properly educate them and give them life skills!

If you have questions about our challenges of culture, please be sure to post them below and we will get you the answers as quickly as possible.

Over the winter break a few small improvements were made to Gavar Special School. One of the projects was to improve the conditions for the teenage girls by replacing the windows in their dormitory. Seven girls sleep in a room that had 30 year old windows that made no attempt to stop the cold. Even covered in plastic, the situation was very poor. Thankfully, a donation given in the name of Miganoush and Sevan Varteressian allowed the two windows to be replaced with modern double paned windows totaling over 4 square meters. The cost of the windows was just over $712 with installation.

In addition, a donation from the Armenian Pentecostal Church of Los Angeles, under the leadership of Mrs. Rosa Sepanian, which has been a long time supporter of efforts to improve special education in Gegharkunik was used to place a new door on the room. This will ensure the girls remain safe and prevent the cold air from the hall way from entering the room. To purchase the door and install it the cost was $215.

This is a small step but it makes a tremendous improvement of the daily lives of the 7 teenage girls that share the room. The room is quite pleasant as it has a gas heater from a previous project to put heaters in the sleeping rooms. The overall goal is to make the children more comfortable so they wish to come to the school to learn as they can be warm and safe. Once warm and safe, the children are able to learn much better as environmental factors do not disturb them.
Translator: Gohar Petrosyan
Editor: Jason

The purpose of the project is to provide more quality occupational education and therapy. The students will learn how to use sewing equipment to create gloves and other small items which can be sold to keep the project sustainable. Of course, volunteers tell me that this skill is atypical for western societies but for Armenia it will give our students another skill by the time they leave our school which could be used to improve their family situation. We are charged with making the best practical decision we can.

It is not clear at this time how much money will be made available from IOM for supplies but we are hopeful that the project will be long term. In addition, we will post pictures of the room once it is finished. Gavar Special School’s future plans continue for continued improvement in the occupational therapy area trying to expand the program in areas such as basic agriculture and shoe repair.

translation by: Gohar Petrosyan
edited by: Jason

Special thanks to Anahid Ugurlayan, President of the Armenian Relief Society Mayr Chapter and her Staff for organizing the event to aid the children of Gavar Special School!

Press Release:

On February 2, 2007, over 50 people from the tri-state area, upstate New York and Washington D.C. braved the cold winter rain to gather at Sortie, a trendy midtown Manhattan lounge, to support a worthy cause – the construction of a roof for the Gavar Special School in Gavar, Armenia. Located in the impoverished Gegharkunik region, the Gavar Special School is dedicated to educating children with special needs. At present, there are nearly 700 special needs children who receive no education (special needs or otherwise) in this region. Indeed, orphanages in Armenia receive five times more funding than special needs schools and only provide half the services.

The school is fortunate to have two dedicated Peace Corps volunteers, Jason Sprague and Kayte Williams, who, along with the school’s director, Lavrik Arevshatyan, have worked tirelessly to meet the children’s education and other needs, provide a safe environment in which the children can learn and raise money for necessary repairs for school, even paying out of their own salaries to do so. Recently, a foundation called The Lots of Sun Foundation for Special Needs Children in Support of Gavar Special School was formed to, in part, lobby the Armenian Government to provide greater financial support for special needs children and ensure that donations from the school are not unduly taxed.

The school and the region also face weather-related challenges. The last two months have been the coldest in the last few years, freezing indoor and outdoor sewer pipes of structures in the region as well as its freshwater supply. The roof is made of metal sheeting which is leaking and causing widespread structural damage to the school. To make matters worse, on January 20, 2007, a storm with high winds ripped away portions of the roof’s dilapidated metal covering. The estimated cost of the roof’s construction is $85,000, a figure which has nearly doubled in the last year due to the increased costs of building materials and the appreciation of the Armenian dram against the U.S. dollar.

Fully aware that the safety of the children is further compromised, the attendees of the mixer and other donors responded generously and over $1000 was raised for the roof construction. The ARS Mayr Chapter and NY ASA wish to extend their thanks to the attendees and other donors for their support for this worthy cause.

In response to the mixer, Jason Sprague of the Gavar School sent the following message: “The Staff, Students and Volunteers of Gavar Special School wish to thank all those who attended the Armenian Relief Society Mayr Chapter of New York and the New York Armenian Students Association for their gracious support of Gavar Special School. The donated money is obviously important but more importantly people are learning of about the situation of special needs education in rural Armenia. Especially in Gegharkunik, there are over 650 children that have special needs that receive no education. As many as 500 of these children could benefit from special education and have a productive life. The situation is dire for these very wonderful children. Your help will be used to create a safe learning environment. We hope you will visit Gavar Special School on your next trip to Armenia to meet the students, staff and volunteers and see the changes your support has helped to ensure. Please subscribe to http://www.GavarSpecialSchool.org to see the changes as they happen and stay abreast of the news at Gavar Special School. Thank you again for your kind compassion and we consider you part of Gavar Special School’s community!”

Additional donations of any amount are greatly needed and appreciated, and those who are interested can log to the Gavar Special School website at http://gavarspecialschool.org/donate.

The ARS was founded in 1910 as an independent, non-sectarian, non-governmental organization (NGO), serving the humanitarian, social, and educational needs of Armenians. The ARS has affiliate entities in 24 countries with a membership of approximately 18,000. An NGO on the roster in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, the ARS is a 501© (3) charitable, tax-exempt organization. The ASA is a nationwide membership organization that promotes Armenian culture and education by providing Armenian communities with social, academic, and educational events. All funds raised by the regional branches contribute to the ASA’s scholarship fund for Armenian students studying in the United States.

This December and January have been some of the coldest weather in many years. Even with the winterization of the School, most of the indoor and outdoor sewer pipes were frozen as well as the freshwater supply. With many four days of work, the administrative staff was able to find all the frozen areas to get most all of the water system working.

The best news was that Gavar Special School was able to escape damage from the earthquakes that struck the Gavar area on January 12th and 13th. However, a very strong storm with high winds struck on January 20th gave a fatal blow to the 31 year old roof, ripping away sections of the old metal covering. We are hopeful that 2007 will bring about the replacement of the roof to ensure the safety of the Gavar Special School building structure. The Staff and Volunteers of Gavar Special School do express our sympathies to many of our neighbors as many homes, schools and apartment buildings in Gavar Special School’s neighborhood sustained more damage than the school. We hope that the government will provide the quick and needed assistance to repair the community.

Over the next week, we will bring the children from all corners of the region. It is a struggle to have families release the students to Gavar Special School on a timely schedule. The family ties are very strong in Gegharkunik and we sympathize with the families being apart while the child studies at Gavar Special School but we are hopeful that we will return a stronger, more educated and more capable child to the family at the end of the year.