Notes from the Armenian Blogosphere
After mentioning the circle.am web statistics service all week I noticed a new site had been registered by the Gavar Special School. As I mentioned in my last post, children in residential institutions are a long term project of mine, and so I was not only glad to find that this site had been set up, but I was ecstatic when I discovered it was actually a blog.
Gavar Special School was founded in 1976, during the Soviet era. Its original purpose was to exclude special needs or “un-normal” children from the population. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the school was under funded and did not have the resources to truly serve the purpose of special needs education.
During the mid-1990’s, the school was able to begin to improve itself with help of caring donors and move itself from an institution of exclusion to one of inclusion. Gavar Special School strives to find ways to integrate the special needs children into the community. An emphasis is placed on occupational therapy thus when the children return to their villages, they can help their family eek out a living.
Today, Gavar Special School is working to find ways to improve itself so I can educate the over 700 children with special needs in Gehgarkunik Marz. The number of 700 children has come from research mainly conducted by Doctors without Borders. It is the hope of the Staff and Volunteers that by the year 2010, Gavar Special School will be a model for special needs education using western methods in Armenia.
Anyway, in the latest post, the Gavar Special School asks bloggers to link to the site and help publicize its existence. For a whole host of reasons, I’m only too glad to do so now. It really is an excellent example of how blogs can create more interest than static sites, and a great precedent in bringing oversight and transparency to development work in countries such as Armenia.
Many people have blogs or websites on which they post journals. We are asking you to write a short entry about Gavar Special School and link back to http://www.GavarSpecialSchool.org informing others about Gavar Special School. This will allow people who are wishing to find more information about Gavar Special School or Armenian Special Needs Education to find the information more easily as there will be a web of links giving information about the school. We thank you in advance for your help and please be sure to give http://www.GavarSpecialSchool.org a trackback or ping.
Also, please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions or concerns. We would love to provide you as much information as needed to answer any questions you may have. Thank you for caring and being part of Gavar Special School’s Community!
Actually, I mentioned this need in a recent Notes from the Armenian Blogosphere when I pointed out that Ara Manoogian at Martuni or Bust is using his to raise awareness and update donors on his Family Foundation’s work in Lachin. Likewise, I also mentioned that a web site I’m producing from a charity in the Diaspora will incorporate a blog as well. Perhaps it’s even time to let you all in on this now.
To begin with, the Executive Director of the charity, YerazArt, is a veteran blogger over at Cilicia.com’s Life in the Armenian Diaspora, and when I mentioned the idea of a blog on the site, not only did he jump at the idea, but he also came up with his own ideas. Some of them are really quite excellent and should make the site very interesting because of the inclusion of a blog.
Like I said, Raffi has some great ideas.
Anyway, the site should be ready this month, but until then, an early screenshot of an albeit basic front page to the site is included below. The photos incidently came from the shoot I did for YerazArt way back when and which I posted on this blog. Anyway, with the Gavar Special School and YerazArt contributing to the Armenian Blogosphere, things are really getting interesting.
Hopefully both will set an important precedent in the use of blogs to not only disseminate information, but to also provide oversight for the Government and NGO sector. Of course, another important area for blogs to appear in is the media, but we still appear to have a long way to go before that can happen. However, when you consider the lack of professionalism among most journalists here, it’s ironically an obvious medium for them to migrate to.
Firstly, because most write articles like opinion pieces this actually means that they’re already able to produce opinionated posts — the norm for the blogosphere. Secondly, if they’re going to do that in any medium, at least blogs allow readers and perhaps even those mentioned by them in articles the opportunity to comment or the right to respond. Anyway.
The Gavar Special School Blog is at http://www.gavarspecialschool.org/.
Early Web Site Mockup, Design & Photography © Onnik Krikorian / YerazArt 2007
Well, even if I only saw the link to the Gavar Special School Blog because it had been registered on Circle.am recently, guess what? Well, the blog has actually been online since October 2005. Today was the only time I’ve seen it, though, which only goes to make me think what other gems are out there, but unknown to me, in the Armenian Blogosphere.
Comment by Onnik — January 10, 2007 @ 2:39 am
Like I told you before - Onnik, A1plus are working on it, and I think sites like: Hetq and ArmeniaNow would only benefit if they introduced some sort of Commenting/Instant User Feedback mechanism on their sites. ArmeniaNow are really the best for me personally - but they have to face the reality - you can’t go on using the same site design for more then a year these days. As far as I can recall - the design and site programming ArmeniaNow has now was introduced a couple of years ago - high time to redesign, add some bells and whistles… I wanter what those guys are thinking on that regard.
Comment by Observer — January 10, 2007 @ 7:22 pm
Observer. didn’t want to mention you telling me about the A1 Plus blog test because I wasn’t sure if it was for general consumption yet. However, I do believe it would be revolutionary for all the reasons you and I know and which we’ve detailed above.
As for Armenia Now, it is interesting that they’ve set up a forum at least for response, as have PanArmenian.net incidently, but I too like the idea of in line commenting although I suppose some media outlets wouldn’t like that.
For example, western media outlets have established blogging from their journalists as part of their sites, and also allowed commenting, but the sections are kept separate from each other. However, they do have a “Have your say,” or equivalent, with inline quoting on the BBC site, for example.
That’s definitely a model that could be followed, and no doubt after reading this exchange I wouldn’t be surprised if Armenia Now incorporate something like this in the near future. It’s definitely the way to go, and they seem to be cued up on such things because they’re used to the standards and approach of western journalism.
However, I suppose money is the issue — probably reason why they don’t go through too many site redesigns. On that, however, the BBC doesn’t redesign it’s site too much and I personally like keeping things familiar and adhering to known branding.
On the other hand, the introduction of new technologies and approaches can still be followed and incorporated without a redesign. For sure, Armenia Now, Pan Armenian and A1 Plus are the only sites to have understood this need even if finances prevent as much as we’d like.
Comment by Onnik — January 11, 2007 @ 12:03 am
well - actually - A1plus are sort of dwindling on the idea - although I keep telling them its really important. So perheps discussions like this one could help me gain more arguments in my attempts to convince them its really something worthwile to do.
Comment by Observer — January 11, 2007 @ 2:11 am
I am thankful you have shared out website! Much appreciated! It is interesting as I do not consider the website a blog. I think of it more as dynamic way to make announcements and to solicit feedback if someone would wish to give it. I see a blog to be more opinionated but both ideas seek to build community.
Thank you again and you and anyone who wishes is invited to visit Gavar Special School. Please use the website to contact us: http://www.GavarSpecialSchool.org/contact-us/
Comment by Jason — January 14, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
Good food for thought. Thanks Onnik. Not sure if we can do much regarding the “inner workings” especially since we straddle the public and private sectors. I am sure you understand my implication. However, I hope we can find more ways to get people to contribute it and turn it into something similar to what you advocate. I agree, great idea.
Thanks!
Comment by Jason — January 16, 2007 @ 5:24 pm