Youth Programs
BEATING WOOL FOR YERMUGS AND OTHER ADVENTURES
CYSCA's most recent student trip to Armenia took place last June when educator and CYSCA Program Director Joanne Hartunian led a group of six teenagers from high schools in the greater Cambridge Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.
The three-week trip theme was Building Bridges: Secondary
School
Partnerships to Promote Civil Society. The group was hosted by Armenian
families and School #106 in the Nork Massiv region at the Knights and
Daughters of Vartan School Complex, whose principal Mr. Yuri Jilavian
is the YCSCA president.
The students brought with them 20 70-pound boxes of materials which were distributed at the Knights and Daughters of Vartan School Complex, the Noubarashen Home for Delinquent Boys, a special needs school which neighbors School #106 and needy students in partner schools #65 in Shengavit and #190 in the Southwest District. The materials included school supplies, English dictionaries and a new electronic blood pressure cuff, which was donated to hospital #6.
| On July 4, Diane M. Spera, educator, led a teaching
workshop,
trained
student teachers and led a class on the meaning of Valentine's Day,
recently introduced to Armenia by Project Harmony and the Grand Candy
Company. One question that emerged from the discussion was whether,
when celebrating the holiday in a classroom, students should be
required to send a valentine to each person in the class, or be
permitted to be selective. Students discussed the concepts of
exclusivity and inclusivity in a civil society and distributed handmade
valentine cards. The visiting students presented interactive project
topics
that
included politics, smoking, music lyrics and gender, and led a
search-engine workshop with the Armenian students. CYSCA students who
participated in the interactive projects included: Christopher
Albano, Belmont High School; Lia Barnes Lenart, Cambridge Rindge and
Latin School; Anna Brody, Cambridge School of Weston; Michael Spera,
Lexington High School: Stefan Tilke, Belmont High School and Scott
Yerganian, Medfield High School. The highlight of the trip was a three-day visit to a
village
with the
students' home-stay host peers where the students prepared the barn for
winter by piling hay; beat wool to make Armenian wool quilts (yermugs);
prepared meals from scratch, which entailed buying chickens and a lamb
from other farmers, which needed to be slaughtered; shopped for each
meal at the local store, and made their meals with local
ingredientsThey soon realized they had consumed all the eggs in the
village simply for breakfast. |
 Summer 2005 high school trip to Armenia: visitors and hosts water tree seedlings planted on an outing to the Armenia Tree Project nursery. |
|
High School group in
Republic Square The chickens responded to this by laying more eggs and it was soon learned that their host's cow would bear a calf in the spring. Discovering that the cost would be prohibitive and their host would have to sell the cow and her unborn calf, the students donated $400 to purchase the cow and her unborn calf and covered the cost of feed, shots and delivery of the calf with the proviso that when it was born, their host would donate it to another family. |
The calf is to be named CYSCA and is expected in the
late spring. At that time both the Armenian and American students will
decide which of the villagers will receive the calf. The family will be
asked in turn to donate its firstborn to another family. In addition to the village, the students visited a hospital, where those interested in medicine had the opportunity to wear scrubs in an operating room and observe several surgeries; as well as, the World Bank, where CYSCA alumna, Esther Demerchyan, who works at the bank, hosted the group. They also visited many museums and churches, swam in Lake Sevan, visited the hot water springs of Jermuk as well as the sites of historical and cultural significance to the Armenian People.  Custodian of School #106 gets in on the fun on Vartavar - national "water fight" day |
 |
Official visits were made
to Yerevan State University, the
newly built
City Hall, the Peace Corps, the UN building and the new US Embassy,
which helped both groups of students understand the significance of
change in Armenia, Community Connections alumnus , Prof. Agassi
Enokyan , gave a lecture in English on the "Political Parties
ofArmenia" and "Armenia's Constitution" at Yerevan State University,
which shed light on Armenia's poletical, economic and social problems
in the context of thr country's current development. Visiting Yerevan's New City Hall. Front row (l.-r.) Scott Yerganian, Medfield H.S.; Vladimir Ohanyan, Gayane Hakhinyan. Second row: Yuri Jilavyan, YCSCA President; Anna Karakhanyan, YCSCA Coordinator; Joanne Hartunian, Youth Program Director; Shushan Ohanyan, Arpit Ghazaryan, David Gevorgyan, Head of Department of Foreign Relations and Information, Yerevan City Hall; Lusine Haroutunyan, Varvara Musaelyan, Anna Brody, Cambridge School of Weston, Chris Albano and Stefan Tilke, Belmont H. S., Lia Barnes Lenart, Cambridge Rindge & Latin School.Back row: Michael Spera, Lexington H. S., Diane Spera, Educator. |
The Energy
Project - Linking classrooms
in
Cambridge and Yerevan 2005
In Yerevan, the project began with a workshop for thhe students and teachers, with guests from the Ministry of Education, the local municipality and advocates of solar power and ecotourism. Organizer Astghine Pasoyan encouraged the students to "Think about how to save energy in a wise way. If you can understand this idea, you can explain it to others and you can be an ambassador and change opinions....The Earth is the same for all of us. Everything is linked." The Tobin project began with a special meeting in the school auditorium, in which students play a "Jeopardy"-like game based on facts they had learned about Armenia and the lives of their new pen-pals.
