| CRY ARMENIA |
MKCHYAN
Agricultural Project
Armenia is an ex-Soviet nation, extremely poor having also suffered a major earthquake and a war with neighbouring Azerbaijan in its recent history.
In 2002, CRY purchased some agricultural land just outside Yerevan and this was added to a year later to give a total now of more than 2.5 hectares. Wheat is grown which is then milled into flour and sold to help feed poor families and their children. The program was expanded during 2006 and 2007 to include pig rearing and a vineyard.
DVIN
Dvin School
Armenia is home to an estimated 7,000 Assyrians who, like the Kurds, are a small people-group within Armenia, descended from the
Biblical Assyrians. A neglected and despised ethnic minority - often treated with hostility, and at the very bottom of the economic ladder, living in exceptional poverty.
CRY is supporting an Assyrian community school at Dvin, a small, fairly inaccessible mountain village. The school is the only one in this desperately poor village providing education for some 400 children living there.
Pastor
Karen Khuchatryan (our Armenian representative) and his church in Yerevan
is helping this community by providing food and clothing. A CRY
grant has also helped to renovate and refurbish the school - all of this
demonstrating and contributing towards social harmony.
The school facilities were in an appalling condition, urgently needing upgrade and renovation, but now 400 students have a warm, functional, safe and better resourced educational facility to go to school in.
Both of these projects represent a new and exciting sphere of involvement for CRY which we expect to grow and develop in the years ahead.