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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.

Gavar Special School is very luck to have friends that understand the basic needs of the children must be met in order for them to learn. Focus on Children Now, Inc (FCN) has undertaken a very large project by collecting clothes from around the greater Los Angeles area to help people in Armenia. Gavar Special School is privileged to be the first school to receive a donation. In the spirit of service, sisters, Eileen and Audria Amirian were influential in helping collect a great volume of clothing.

The clothing sent by FCN was used in part by Gavar Special School. About half of the 15 boxes of clothes were given to various families in the greater Gavar and Sevan areas. These families all have one thing in common and that is the fact they have special needs children and have had very bad luck. Most of the families have an annual income of less than $500 a year.

FCN will continue their project and help other schools and communities. The following article provides more information:

Glendale, CA based Focus on the Children Now, Inc. (FCN), an organization whose mission is to assist needy children in Armenia, has recently completed its first successful clothing drive. Collected were over 2000 items of clothing intended for the most disadvantaged people in the Republic of Armenia. Gavar Special School was selected as the first organization to receive a donation of 15 large boxes of gently used clothing to be used for the special needs resident students, with remaining clothing to be distributed within the larger Gavar community.

A large portion of the clothes were collected by Eileen and Audria Amirian of Glendale, California through activities held at Clark Magnet High School and La Canada Preparatory School. Students and families brought over many clothes with them to school where the items were collected by Mr. Vahik Rostami and taken to Prime Linen which donated laundry facilities and 1,500 square feet of storage space for holding and organizing the clothes in preparation for shipment to Armenia.

Brothers, Robert and Avo Amirian and Mr. Varooj Kureghian as well as the Amirian Sisters sent the first shipment of clothing to Gavar Special School which arrived on March 12, 2007 in Gavar, Republic of Armenia. The Staff and Volunteers of Gavar Special School have received the packages with enthusiasm, which have been unpacked and categorized for distribution. Over 200 people will receive items, with priority given to the 92 special needs children of Gavar Special School. Most of the students come from extremely poor family situations being that the Gegharkunik Region of Armenia from which Gavar Special School draws its student body is the poorest in the country.

Focus on the Children Now, Inc will continue its work to help some of the most disadvantaged communities in the Republic of Armenia by partnering with various community organizations around the country. Many of these organizations were met through the recommendations of Peace Corps Volunteers who live and work in rural Armenia.

In the future, Focus on the Children Now, Inc will continue to send shipments of gently used clothing. If you wish to donate items to help the most disadvantaged in rural Armenia, please contact Mr. Varooj Kureghian at 818-517-7080.

Gavar Special School is very fortunate to have many friends who wish to see it improve and be able to meet the needs of the special needs children of Gegharkunik Marz. In Los Angeles, California on May 5, 2007 Focus on Children Now, Inc will hold their Annual Gala Dinner and Auction in support of Gavar Special School. It will be a wonderful evening of fun, fellowship, dancing and food. Jason and Tera Sprague will attend and be able to answer all your questions about Gavar Special School’s challenges, joys and future plans.

The evening will feature a silent auction with items made by students of Gavar Special School as well as artists from Abovian and Gavar so bring your competitive spirit!!

If you are interested in attending, please download the details by clicking here. Please do not wait as I am told tickets are going fast. It will be a great night and the ultimate result will be that the special needs children of Gavar Special School will be one step closer to reasonable education and life skills! If you have questions, feel free to send an email through the contact page.

An exciting development is all the articles and pages are being written in Armenian so all will be in two languages. This is very exciting as it will allow the http://www.GavarSpecialSchool.org to reach more people and expand the community of supporters.

Of course, there is the ability to add comments and questions to each article and the contact page allows you to email any questions you may have. Do remember the photo album which can be found at the bottom of the sidebar.

A small tip is that http://www.GavarSpecialSchool.org should be viewed with Mozilla FireFox which is a free web browser. Internet explorer is unpleasant and viewing http://www.GavarSpecialSchool.org is much more enjoyable. Do click here to download an install this awesome software if you are not yet using it.

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