Specialized Children’s Home, Kharberd, Ararat Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Today, as part of ongoing work on children in residential care in Armenia, I visited a new center for adults with mental disabilities on the outskirts of Yerevan. This is especially interesting for me given my ongoing project on the Kharberd Specialized Children’s Home. Although conditions there have improved significantly since the early to mid 1990s, when the institution was hit by scandal after scandal, there still remains the problem of what happens to the kids when they reach the age of 18.

Yulia, Warm Hearth, 3rd Gyugh, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Yulia is a 26 year old woman with autism. She was abandoned at the tender age of six and since has been shifted around from orphanage to orphanage. She was severely neglected until the age of fifteen. As a result, she was profoundly underweight and did not speak for many years. She is still very timid around strangers but has made impressive progress in the last few years. She speaks on a fairly regular basis now, is learning to write and enjoys art activities. Yulia loves soft toys, baby animals, and candy. She lights up when she hears music and often dances to Armenian folk music. Her first language is Russian, so we often call her by the Russian nickname of Yulushky. She is kind-hearted and is cared for deeply by all who know her.

http://www.helpforarmenia.org/residents.htm

Although they’re meant to be transferred to the Vardenis Psychiatric Institution, the present Director refuses to do so because, like most state-run psychiatric institutions in Armenia, conditions there are appaling. Therefore, although the Warm Hearth pilot project doesn’t address the need to reintegrate the disabled into society or with biological and foster families while they’re still children, it does at least offer those with disabilities the opportunity to lead a dignified life when they’re adults.

Specialized Children’s Home, Kharberd, Ararat Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

A press release from the U.S. Embassy in Armenia says this about the new center recently opened on the outskirts of Yerevan:

FORMER U.S. PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS AIM TO SAVE ORPHANED ARMENIANS WITH DISABILITIES FROM PSYCHIATRIC “GRAVEYARDS”

Group Home Will Be First in Armenia To Offer Long-Term Rehabilitative Care

YEREVAN, Armenia – On January 20th, 2006 in Spandaryan Taghamas (3rd Gyugh) outside of Yerevan, a celebration took place to welcome eight adult orphans with disabilities into their new home, Warm Hearth. Warm Hearth is a group home that offers long-term care to individuals without family that have mental and/or physical disabilities. This is the first opportunity for long-term rehabilitative care in Armenia. Warm Hearth is a pilot project that is the collaborative effort of former U.S. Peace Corps volunteers, Mission Armenia and Armenian Mental Health Foundation’s “Day Center”.

[…]

Warm Hearth is the brainchild of a former Peace Corps volunteer, Natalie Rizzieri, who served in Armenia for two years. She and another former volunteer, Bridget Anderson, have raised nearly $100,000 to open the group home. The two hope Yulia and others like her will continue the progress they have made in recent years. Yulia now speaks and is learning to write.

[…]

The project is meeting a dire need. Many countries in the former Soviet Union lack the infrastructure to adequately care for individuals with disabilities and mental illness. The Ministry of Social Welfare and the Ministry of Education & Science Secondary Education Department are supportive of Warm Hearth due to the pressing need in Armenia. Chief Specialist of the Secondary Education Department, Anahit Muradyan, emphasized the importance of projects such as Warm Hearth for the Education department as they face the challenge of what to do with orphans who reach the age of 18 but struggle with disabilities. She is optimistic about collaboration and the development of this model in the future.

Anyway, the project looks good so I hope that other similar centers will eventually open. I’d also like to see something like The First Step Center in Tbilisi for children from the Kaspi Specialized Children’s Home in Georgia open in Armenia as well. In the meantime, there’s more information on the Warm Hearth center here as well as an article published by Armenia Now here.

Roman, Warm Hearth, 3rd Gyugh, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Roman is a very amiable young man, with a smile and a childlike fervor that is endearing. Born in Yerevan, he spent most of his life at Nubarashen Orphanage until moving to Kapan in 1999. At 24 years of age, he loves music and enjoys being outside. He is learning to draw, color and write this year. He has shown remarkable progress in that he is increasingly willing to try new things. For so long he held back after being told all of his life that he was unable. But he is showing courage, which is encouraging. Roman is a story-teller. He loves horses and wants to learn how to ride them. He wants to live a good, long life and be clever and friendly. He has said that after living so long with the other residents of Warm Hearth, that they are now his brothers and sisters. For this reason, he never wants to leave them.

http://www.helpforarmenia.org/residents.htm

On a related note, Hetq Online has also published an article by a Peace Corps Volunteer on those with disabilities in Armenia.

The deep-rooted prejudice against disabled people in Armenia has resulted in the absolute isolation of disabled people from the communal society. In Dilijan, there is no regular school that accepts students with disability, and plus, the facility is inadequate for students with physical disabilities. Some of my students have completed high school and college education. Yet, they cannot find jobs because of societal views on their disabilities and their lack of social skills due to the marginalization they have experienced throughout their lives. In addition, the lack of involvement in community activities has disadvantaged the disabled people in terms of education. In Dilijan, there are 854 adults over the age of 18 who have disabilities, mentally or physically. And most of them sit at home not doing much, since they do not have any opportunity to work.

While the community is ignorant about and unaware of disabled people, the disabled people and their family members are often uninformed about their rights as human beings as well. The lack of exposure of disabled people to the community has made people with disabilities more alienated socially. The parents of disabled children stay on alert to protect their children, and often they also find themselves unwelcome in the community, and uneducated. The community and the disabled people and their families are segregated from each other. Due to the unavailability of educational opportunity and social isolation, people with disabilities and their families face severe poverty.

The full article can be read here. Photographs from the Warm Hearth center were also published today by Hetq Online.