Zartonok-89 NGO

«BUILDING AUTONOMY IN RURAL AREAS» Progress Report:










The main objective of the «Building autonomy in rural areas» project was to help and promote the autonomy of young people in 2 regions of the Republic of Armenia and in 2 villages of Nagorno Karabagh (Nagorno Karabagh is also known as Artsakh). The project implemented Zartonk 89 NGO. «Building autonomy in rural areas» project was approved on 01.11.2015, money was transfered by Otto Per Mille Chiesa Valdese on 28.12.15, but Zartonk-89 NGO received it on 01.02.16 so we started immediately the implementation of the project. 

 The duration of the project was 3 months. During the 1st month we carried out the preparatory work, certificate preparation, contacting NGOs in Armenia (Vanadzor, Martuni) and Nagorno Karabagh (Shushi and Tigranakert), spreading open calls in order to inform and select participants considering participant's age, motivation and activity. In Lori region we contacted Zartonk-89 NGO's representative in Vanadzor and «NGO center» Civil Society Development NGO (non-governmental organization) who provided us free working place to realize our 4 day training course. They also helped us to distribute open call of our training course and to select participants. In Gegharkunik region we contacted Zartonk-89 NGO's representative in Martuni and Martuni Infotun, Martuni Women's Community Council (MWCC) NGO who also provided us free working place to implement our 4 day training course. In Nagorno Karabagh (also known as Artsakh) we contacted Artsakh Youth Development Center (AYDC) NGO who provided us free working place and helped to distribute open call in order to select participants for our training course. In each place we had 20 participants, so in 4 place in total we had 80 participants. We implemented 4 day training course in each place.
The 1st day we met with participants, presented our project, modules of our training course, created a positive atmosphere for teamwork and collaboration. We took a time to present that our project was supported with funds from Otto per Mille of the Waldensian Church of Italy. The main objective of our first meeting was creating a climate of confidence and mutual respect between young participants. 2nd day activities were about building autonomy, active citizenship, civic engagement, developing sensitivity and positive critical ability towards themselves and society. 3rd day our main topics were «crisis», «stress» and «conflict», our participants discovered about of origins of those words, had intense discussions and team working, learnt and developed strategies to understand, manage and overcome crisis and stress, how to transform and constructively resolve personal and interpersonal conflicts. 4th day we devoted to learning of different educational, social, learning tools and ways to observe, rise up and find solutions to community related issues (social media, e-learning, discussion groups, etc). In each place in the end of the training course participants received certificates and we had a time for feedback and evaluation of the training course through a distributed questionnaires to fill in, it was anonymous so our participants could freely express their opinions about our 4 day training and about our trainers. Whole training course was based on non-formal methodology. During all the project we were distributing information and photo reports on website of Zartonk-89 NGO, on social media like Facebook page, Facebook group. 


The center «Noyan Tapan» also distributed information and photo reports. Surely we can say that our participants obtained team working skills, they freely expressed their own thoughts, ideas and proposals for future social changes, they developed their sense of autonomy, active citizenship and civic engagement, they learnt how to face and overcome crisis and stress, also how to use different educational, social and learning tools in order to observe, rise up and find solutions in their communities, they established a culture of dialogue. We are sure that they became more autonome, dinamic and initiative to bring positive changes in their life and in the society.