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Home » Our work » Success Stories
 | PSRP in Chinar Village
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Chinar Cattle Breeding Project
Rarely one needs to drive more than four hours to reach somewhere in Armenia. It seemed to me that four hours were enough to reach any corner in the Northern Armenia. However, this time we have been driving to Chinari village (Tavush region of Armenia) more than five hours. After reaching the northwestern highway that leads the Armenian‐Georgian border, we have turned 90 degrees eastward turning and passing through the way lying across the border of Azerbaijan that behaves unfriendly to Armenia for the last 20 years. One could feel tension in the air and the presence of military people in uniforms was strengthening this feeling. Soldiers standing at this border are young people from different towns and villages of Armenia that came to serve in the National Army.
After spending a night in the local small hotel in Berd town (“Berd” means fortress in Armenian) on 18 November, we have left this town for Chinar village early in the next morning for PSRP. Our way was passing through Choratan village that is also covered by Chinar Cattle Breeding Project, ID# 27‐0245‐01, where PSRP was held the day before. The road looked beautifully in autumn colors, being accompanied by apple, winter peaches, as well as cheerful orange Oriental persimmon trees.
Upon our arrival the beneficiaries had already gathered in the largest room of the village municipality. After registration of the participants and a small introduction of our team to the community, the PSRP began. In the beginning the community recalled the Heifer’s history (indeed very few organizations has so long history, even UN is one year younger!) as well as Heifer’s activity in Armenia and throughout South Caucasus. Then with the help of our facilitation the commnity group once more went throgh Heifer 12 Cornerstones on which any Heifer project is an
The next step was evaluation of the project as per Cornerstones and for this task the community group was divided into three teams. The teams involved themselves in interesting debates concerning the status of various issues as seen through prism of different Cornerstones. All three speakers representing their teams’ opinion commented why the team evaluated this or that Cornerstone in this particular way. The community group evaluated the strongest cornerstones to be Accountability, Sharing and Caring, Gender and Family Focus, Genuine Need and Justice, Full Participation and Spirituality.
As the people admitted, Sustainability and Self‐Reliance, Improved Animal Management, Nutrition and Income, Improving the Environment, Training and Education Cornerstones needed improvement and the common better understanding of them by the community group may help them in this. The analysis by the teams revealed that these Cornerstones were strongly interrelated and if Improved Animal Management is strengthened, it would result in a situation where the community would benefit much more from Nutrition and Income as well as Sustainability and Self‐Reliance Cornerstones.
As for Training and Education Cornerstone, the Chinari people mentioned justly that there was always something new to learn especially in our rapid changing century and therefore “it was silly to tell that we knew everything and did not need anything to learn.” The Improving the Environment Cornerstone is weak as almost everywhere in the world, but this does not justify them especially as Chinar community has such environment activists as Hayk Petrosyan, who is successfully running a trees‐nursery, project leaders David Melikyan, Arman Mirzoyan, village mayor Samvel Saghoyan who are always ready to organize tree planting actions as well as removal of waste from the village outskirts. From the other hand each inhabitant of Chinar village has always been practicing such universal human values as Love, Respect, Dignity, Belief, Hope and of course Peace. People believe that these values will help them to beautify their beloved Chinar. Indeed we have learnt the meaning of Peace to Chinari people: we have been eyewitnesses of the fact how fragile it is here – during the very day of our visit to this wonderful and per se peaceful village there was several times a shooting from the Azerbaijan side.
Indeed PSRP was an exceptional event for Chinar, an event allowing them to analyze and realize ways how to solve problems after which the people living here can dream about much better future.
At the end of PSRP all of participants said words of gratitude to Heifer and all of its donors. Special gratitude was expressed to Mrs. Sandra Stark for supporting the project for two years already. Everyone living here is confident that the project was very necessary and timely: “Heifer’s support to this community through the project is itself a fusion of all human values,” considered project participants.
It was already quite dark when we took the way back to Yerevan. One thing ‐ optimism of the people living under permanent threat, their confidence in a better tomorrow surprised us. As Oscar Wilde wrote, “The purpose of life is self‐expression.” And even many of beneficiaries do not know this great Englishman’s words; they truly follow this life credo in their daily and so uneasy rural life.
By Knarine Ghazanchyan
Training Coordinator
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