Commentary: Glendale-founded nonprofit aids Armenian students
Before I arrived in Armenia as a Peace Corps volunteer, I knew that the country in the southern Caucasus mountains was challenged by the effects of economic stagnation, an 18% unemployment rate, the continuing pull of Russia and the ongoing war with Azerbaijan.
After I arrived, I quickly learned of another difficulty. When I was trying to teach my sixth-form English class at Proshyan School about comparative adjectives — good, better, best; bad, worse, worst — Erik, the moon-faced class clown, put his elbows down on his aging desk. It collapsed in his lap. He jumped up and laughed. No harm done, except for an interrupted lesson.
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Erik is enrolled in Perch Proshyan Middle School in the town of Ashtarak on the wide southern flank of 13,419-foot Mount Aragats. It is what I have found to be a typical Armenian middle school. The grounds are littered and ragged, except for lilac bushes that bloom massively in spring.
Two of the school’s four wings are abandoned with windows boarded up, peeling walls and rooms full of shattered chairs and desks. In the other two, young Armenian scholars learn to read and write, pass notes and throw spitballs, like kids everywhere.
I also learned that Armenian kids have little motivation to master English because it can’t be counted on as a ticket to a successful future. Russian serves young Armenians better, as the only places where they’re likely to find jobs are in Kazakhstan, the Ukraine and Russia.
With many breadwinners forced to move away for paychecks, every year enrollment shrinks, further impoverishing schools whose meager budgets are based on the size of the student body. Textbooks are outdated and full of errors, teachers make as little as $30 a month and low-performing students are routinely promoted.
While Armenian-Americans can’t do much about those larger hurdles to education in their ancestral homeland, a group in California is proving that progress can be made when it comes to improving the physical environment of schools, which studies have linked to student motivation.
The Armenia School Foundation, a nonprofit group of Armenian Americans founded in Glendale in 2003 by philanthropist Levon Aharonian, provided Proshyan School with new desks, chairs, blackboards and bookcases, with the help of a donation from the Tamberchi Foundation. When the new furniture arrived, big, strong ninth-form boys carted it into the hall while teachers and students looked on, as amazed and delighted as if they’d just been let out of school early.
Proshyan isn’t the only school to get an ASF makeover — not by a long shot. My fellow Peace Corps volunteer Brian Saliba’s school in Yeghegnadzor also got new furniture from ASF around the same time Proshyan was refurbished.
In fact, since 2003, 230 Armenian schools in isolated mountain villages and regional centers like Ashtarak have received classroom furniture, benefiting some 21,000 students. Some of the furniture is brand new, some damaged pieces recycled at a workshop south of the Armenian capital, Yerevan.
The organization mounts raffles, programs and exhibitions with proceeds going to school projects in Armenia. It has a tiny staff, keeps a low profile and works at a grass-roots level, often partnering with volunteers from the U.S. Peace Corps in Armenia who assist their schools in communicating with the ASF.
Of course, new furniture isn’t the only answer. But at my school I know there’s been a positive bounce in the students’ receptiveness and behavior. New furniture has put big beautiful smiles on kids’ faces, and a smiling kid is a kid who’s ready to learn.
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SUSAN SPANO is a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia and travel writer.