December 2013

It seems like it was yesterday when I wrote my first “web letter” after my initial 100 days on the job. It has been an exciting year of learning, strategising and managing the Armenian Department.

First of all, after months of work, our Five Year Programming Plan is ready. We have posted it on our website in the four languages in which we work: English, Armenian, French and, of course, Portuguese. Please take a look at it and let us know what you think. The Plan reinforces our core mandate to support Armenian education, culture and learning through a series of programmes such as university scholarships, school grants, civil society support in Armenia and many other initiatives. You will note that we use the words “strategic,” “innovative,” “contemporary,” “technology,” “youth,” “focussed,” “results” and “impact” frequently, as we strive to modernise the Department. Of course, our signature programmes remain: scholarships, school support and publications, but we are also engaging in some new initiatives such as Armenian-Turkish dialogue and the extensive use of new technologies in language learning. The preservation and strengthening of Western Armenian is at the core of our programmes.

In early 2014 we will be presenting the Plan to various Armenian communities.

Unfortunately, 2013 continued to be a tragic year for the Syrian Armenians. We have followed events there closely and have done our utmost to send humanitarian assistance. Between school support, emergency scholarships and humanitarian aid, we have sent or earmarked over € 600,000 from our 2013 budget. Part of this was spent this year, and part will be send throughout 2014. For example, we partnered with the AGBU and Armenia’s Ministry of the Diaspora to pay the tuition fees of Syrian-Armenian students studying at universities in Armenia.

On a happier note, an Armenian documentary film, “Steel Gates” won first prize at the Festival Temps d’Images here in Portugal. We had provided some very modest support to the festival to enable the film director’s visit to Lisbon for a few days. It was a pleasure to see him claim the Prize in person at the end of the festival.

In Armenia, our dual approach continued. On the one hand, we worked with theMadenataran (manuscript library) and Yerevan State University in funding publications and supporting short term travel grants to students, and on the other, we were pleased to be part of civil society initiatives on youth engagement, including one that examined the impact of mining on local communities and civic mobilisation.

Of course, I cannot enumerate the long list of projects we supported over the past year. They stretched from publication and digitisation grants, to research awards and Armenian Studies scholarships, to puppet theatre in Armenia presented by handicapped children.

You might have noticed that our website is starting to become a bit more appealing, updated more frequently with interesting snippets of information. We are working hard to transform it into a dynamic source of information related to our work.

Finally, and importantly, we have at last “unfrozen” our university student scholarship programme. There are new categories of scholarships, which are more targeted and in greater amounts. Please take a look at the “grants” part of our website to see further details. You will note that there are two important changes in our approach. First, we have made the scholarships exclusively merit-based, and second, we are privileging students from developing countries (e.g. Middle East) for the undergraduate grants, while other (graduate) scholarships are based on international competition. We will start receiving new applications in January.

We are looking forward to implementing our new Programming Plan in 2014. It entails some continuity and some change. As we turn our grants to more pro-active engagements rather than reactive awards, we will be working closely with a number of partners to support Armenian culture and education throughout the world.

I take this opportunity to wish all of our partners and awardees a wonderful Holiday Season. Shnorhavor Nor Dari oo Sourp Tsenunt! 

Razmik Panossian
Director of the Armenian Communities Department