Copies of a collection of my articles and photographs, Armenia: Poverty, Transition & Democracy, published by the Gomidas Institute are available at The Club at 40 Tumanian Street in Central Yerevan. One reader wrote the following on the book in November.

Buy this book! I want to recommend it to everybody. I got it visiting Armenia several weeks ago and its impressive photos are still appealling to me, its texts a demand. This excellent journalist is keeping his solidarity to the poor, outcasted people, and the book is a lesson.

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Nursery Home of Estery, Imereti Region, Republic of Georgia © Onnik Krikorian / NKA 2007

After putting together the audio photo slide show for the Newport Kutaisi Association, I’ve been informed that a mail shot has been sent out to councilors at Newport County Council informing them of the NKA’s continuing work in Georgia’s second largest city. Nice to see the slide show being linked to and promoted as a means of raising awareness of work being conducted by EveryChild and NKA.

Dear Councillor

Please link to the excellent slideshow of the Everychild project in Kutaisi, our twinned City in Georgia. The project is an example of what can be achieved in this emerging country with our support. Newport City Council is playing a major role in this success. The Social Work team under Penny Lloyd-Evans ran an intensive training programme in Newport for five key social workers from Kutaisi in the Imereti Region in June 2006. The experience and knowledge they took back is transforming the way orphans and children in care are treated in Georgia. Following the success of this project a high level mission from Georgia is visiting London next week and we have been invited to participate.

We commissioned Onnik Krikorian a British photojournalist based in Armenia to record the results so far. There is still a long way to go but with Newport City Council’s support in this project and their lead role in the Local Democracy Agency the future looks very bright.

Catherine Philpott,
Chair of Newport Kutaisi Association

Links:
Audio slideshow of Onnik Krikorian’s recent visit http://www.oneworld.am/photojournalism/kutaisi/
Everychild visit to Newport 2006 http://www.nkta.org/Whatachieved/Socialworkvist06.html
Local Democracy Agency: http://www.nkta.org/Aerilonline/Newonline/valmorbidareport.html

Incidentally, I’m interested in pursuing more work in Georgia as well as Armenia so any organizations, charities or media outlets interested in my ongoing work on key themes and issues such as poverty, children in institutions, mental health, democracy, landmines and minorities can contact me via the email address in the right hand column of this page.

SOS Kinderdorf Children’s Village, Kotayk, Kotayk Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

In February last year, as part of my ongoing work on children in institutions or deprived of appropriate parental care, I wrote an article and produced a photo story on the work of SOS Kinderdorf in Armenia. The article was just one of many that have dealt with the issue of poverty and abandonment in both Georgia and Armenia.

[…] SOS Kinderdorf has into the largest organization dealing with orphans and children deprived of parental care in the world. The Hermann Gmeiner Foundation, as well as individual donors, funds the organization’s activities. There are currently over 60,000 children living in 450 villages operating in 132 countries. An additional 500,000 children receive support through kindergartens, schools and youth centers.

[…]

Regardless of it’s size and success, however, what makes SOS Kinderdorf different from other organizations dealing with children deprived of parental care is in its approach. Although many Diasporan-based organizations have sought to support institutions for abandoned children, a new government policy aimed at removing children from residential care in Armenia instead seeks to promote alternatives.

“The main thing that makes us different from State orphanages is that we provide long term family-based care,” says Ashot Kocharyan, National Director for SOS Children‘s Villages in Armenia. “When I say long-term, I mean in terms of our commitment to the care and upbringing of our children. We don’t stop when they reach the age of 18, but continue up until the age of 22 and sometimes 24.”

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After EurasiaNet put together my photos with audio commentary for the 12 May parliamentary election , I’ve started to look at doing the same for new work. Actually, I’ve always put together my work in formats such as Macromedia Flash, but used text instead of audio to set the background. Anwyay, here’s a first attempt to change that. It’s on social work and de-institutionalization in Georgia for the Newport Kutaisi Association.

[…] poverty levels remain high with some families having no choice but to place their children into State-run Children’s Homes and Boarding Schools. Commonly referred to as orphanages, 85-90 percent of 5,400 children enrolled into such institutions actually have parents. Of concern are recent reports from the international Children’s Charity, EveryChild, which warn that institutional care can seriously hinder a child’s development.

As a result, the London-based organization, which also has an office in Tbilisi, is now working with the Georgian government, and in particular its Ministry of Education and Science, to reintegrate such children back into their biological families or to place them in foster care. According to EveryChild, over 500 children have already been removed from institutions, including one hundred who have been reunited with their biological families.

Other organizations are also working to assist children from institutions in finding employment when they become adults through vocational training programs. Centers for the rehabilitation of children with disabilities, another group at risk of being institutionalized, are also being opened in urban centers, including the second largest city of Kutaisi.

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Arinj, Kotayk Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

After hearing that Gagik Tsarukian, founder of the Prosperous Armenia party, would be attending a special event in his home village of Arinj on the outskirts of Yerevan, there was no way I couldn’t go either, and not least because despite all the controversy surrounding Armenia’s richest man, word has it that he is highly respected in the area surrounding the city of Abovian.

Indeed, according to Garo (aka Christian Garbis) from Notes from Hairenik, Arinj itself might even be considered a model village for Armenia. Of course, it’s situated pretty much on the outskirts of Yerevan, but there’s no doubt that Tsarukian’s businesses and assistance has something to do with it. Garo and a mutual friend, Hamlet, set off this afternoon to take a look.

We missed Tsarukian who apparently turned up in the morning, but the day was interesting nonetheless. As Garo explains in his latest post, not only was the village quite unlike many others in Armenia, but the event was notable in itself — if only for plumes of smoke eminating from the fire of hundreds of candles lit by those converging on an old church.

Today was the “village day” for Arinj, in other words a holiday, during which hundreds of people—perhaps thousands as they were coming from all around the vicinity—migrate to the site of an ancient monastery perched on hill. All that remains is a tiny chapel, but nearly all the visitors managed to cram into it—not all at once but in a remarkably orderly fashion, filing in and out without shoving, cutting in line or whatever else. Those that could not manage to enter to light candles instead lit them in two large rectangular votives just outside. But for some reason people had given up lighting the individually and inserting them into the sand. Instead the simply threw the candles on top of this uncontrollable fire that burned from the melted liquid wax. I never saw anything like that before—it just shows that Armenians cannot ever let completely go of their fire-worshipping roots. […] Alongside the road leading up to the chapel were vendors selling toy guns, lollipops, sunflower seeds, popcorn, plastic jewelry and all sorts of other things. Oh, and candles, I almost forgot to mention. Every vendor there was selling candles, I swear.

[…]

Arinj must be one of the cleanest villages that I have ever visited in Armenia. It is rare to find any litter on the sidewalks or gutters. And in the late spring there are perennial flowers planted alongside the curbs—even grass grows in certain spots. I would dare think the fact that the small town’s golden boy lives there is the primary reason why the town looks so nice. There are even young trees planted throughout, especially around the vicinity of the chapel, which also serves as a public park it looked to me.

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Motsameta, Imereti Region, Republic of Georgia © Onnik Krikorian / NKTA 2007

International Women’s Day coincided with my visit last week to Kutaisi to document the work of social workers from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Georgia for the Newport Kutaisi Association. With a national holiday otherwise preventing me from visiting more institutions, I instead accompanied some of the social workers and beneficiary families to the nearby religious sites of Motsameta and Gelati, one of two UNESCO World Heritage Sites around Kutaisi.

The Gelati Monastery for a long time remained one of the main cultural and enlightening centers in old Georgia. It had an Academy which employed the most celebrated Georgian scientists - theologians and philosophers, many of whom had previously been active at various orthodox monasteries abroad or at the Mangan Academy in Constantinople. Among the scientists were such celebrated scholars as Ioann Petritsi and Arsen Ikaltoeli.

Due to the extensive enlightening work carried out by the Gelati Academy, people of the time used to call it “a new Hellas”, “a second Athos”.

The Gelati Monastery has preserved a great number of murals and manuscripts dating back to the 12th-17th centuries.

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IDP Collective Centre, Kutaisi, Imereti Region, Republic of Georgia © Onnik Krikorian / NKTA 2007

As part of the work shot for the Newport Kutaisi Association it only seemed natural to visit two collective centers inhabited by ethnic Georgians displaced during fighting in Abkhazia in the early 1990s for background contextual shots to illustrate the social situation in Georgia’s second largest city. Having shot a lot of work on IDPs and refugees in Armenia, it was interesting to do something similar in Georgia, and not least because the Urban Institute is operating a voucher system modeled after one implemented in Armenia’s second largest city, Gyumri.

Based on the highly successful USAID Armenia Housing Purchase Voucher Program implemented by the Urban Institute from 2000- 2005 for households displaced from the 1988 Earthquake, The U.S. Department of State BPRM awarded a Cooperative Agreement to UI to pilot a similar voucher program to provide permanent shelter to families displaced from the civil conflicts in Georgia in the early 1990’s. Kutaisi, Georgia’s second largest city, was selected as the venue because of its high concentration of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia. The pilot is testing the concept in the local context and demonstrating the approach to all stakeholders, including the Government of Georgia and the donor community, to inform a broader national housing strategy and to garner support for a potential roll-out of a larger program.

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Ministry of Education & Science Educational Resource Centre, Kutaisi, Imereti Region, Republic of Georgia © Onnik Krikorian / NKTA 2007

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Outskirts of Kutaisi, Imereti Region, Republic of Georgia © Onnik Krikorian / NKTA 2007

As mentioned in the comments section of one of the previous posts, part of any successful attempt at reintegration of institutionalized children into their biological families and with foster or adopting parents has to be the provision of oversight and monitoring through visits by social workers.

As I also mentioned in another previous post, many of Kutaisi’s social workers at the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Georgia visited Newport in Wales last year and are also upgrading their knowledge and skills through a TACIS Tempus project at Tbilisi State University.

Tbilisi State University will be training social workers at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and the curriculum is being devised with cultural traditions and differences in mind. To plug the skills gap before the students qualify, the work and expertise of those already working in social work type roles will be recognised with a certificate. This certificate course has already begun, with forty mature students. It is hoped that these successful students will provide placements for the students on the four year social work course which begins in September 2006.

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World Vision Vocational Training, Kutaisi, Imereti Region, Republic of Georgia © Onnik Krikorian / NKTA 2007

As part of the process of deinstitutionalization in Georgia, the Ministry of Education and Science also works with local partners such as World Vision who also have their own team of social workers and complement state services with additional opportunities such as vocational training and group homes.

It’s interesting to read the background to a problem that also exists in Armenia on a larger scale, but is rarely reported in comparison to Georgia, although I’ve tried.

GEORGIA - Infants and children in Georgia are at a greater risk of being abandoned and placed in an institution if they have a disability or come from poor or dysfunctional families. 85 to 90% of the 5400 children in orphanages and other residential institutions in Georgia actually have parents.

[…]

In response to this crisis, World Vision, together with EveryChild, UNICEF and the Ministries of Labour, Health, Social Affairs & Education, have implemented the first ‘Prevention of Infant Abandonment and Deinstitutionalisation’ project in Georgia (PIAD) . A mother & infant shelter has been opened to provide counsel and assistance to mothers ‘at risk’ of abandoning their infants. They will also have access to employment counselling, vocational and business training and small group loans through World Vision’s Micro Enterprise Development program.

The project will also demonstrate alternative family and community based care for infants, including fostering, national adoption and reintegration with the birth family.

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Nursery Home of Estery, Imereti Region, Republic of Georgia © Onnik Krikorian / NKTA 2007

I’ve been to so many boarding schools in Armenia that it’s not surprising their equivalents in Georgia are pretty much identical in terms of conditions with the wallpaper coming off crumbling walls in rooms connected by dark and poorly ventilated corridors. However, the one main difference was that in Georgia many of these soviet era institutions are emptying whereas in Armenia they are not.

At the confusingly named “Nursery Home of Estery” on the outskirts of Kutaisi, for example, there were only 18 children from approximately 90 originally enrolled and attending. This is because of the continuing policy of deinstutionalization in the Republic of Georgia and the provision of family-based alternative forms of care for vulnerable and abandoned children.

Georgia has over 4,500 children currently living in orphanages, and the vast majority of them (86%) are not in fact orphans but have been abandoned by their families who have been hit hard by poverty and other social problems. These families have no form of assistance or safety net and for those living on the edge, the institutions are the only available option.

Institutional care, however, can seriously hinder a child’s development, as they don’t receive the proper care and attention they need to flourish.

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