Portfolio of Practice
Programs & Initiatives
Six long-running initiatives, each with a documented theory of change, a published budget, named local partners and monitoring indicators reviewed twice a year by our Board and by an independent evaluator.
How we choose
Theory of change and programme selection
We do not start programmes because a funding call exists. Every initiative on this page began with a documented need assessment carried out in the community itself — household interviews, school records, marzpetaran statistics and, in several cases, a full baseline survey conducted with a university partner. A proposed programme must demonstrate that the need is durable rather than episodic, that no state or civil-society actor is already meeting it adequately, that a measurable outcome can be defined, and that a credible local partner is willing to co-own delivery. Programmes that fail any of those four tests are declined, and we have declined eleven since 2016, including two that came with substantial funding attached.
Each programme is monitored against indicators agreed at design stage and reviewed twice a year. Where an indicator fails for two consecutive review cycles, the Executive Committee must either redesign the intervention or wind it down, and the decision is recorded in the annual report published on our transparency page. Beneficiary feedback is collected independently of field staff, through paper forms and a confidential telephone line, so that people can criticise the service without criticising the person who delivered it.
Programme 01
Tech Inclusion for Rural Youth in Shirak
Launched in 2013 out of a single borrowed classroom in Gyumri's School No. 21, Tech Inclusion for Rural Youth in Shirak was our organisation's first sustained programme and remains the one most staff describe as our identity. Shirak marz, still recovering from the 1988 earthquake's demographic scars and decades of outmigration, has some of the lowest rates of home broadband and digital literacy in Armenia outside the border villages. The programme's premise is simple and, we believe, provable: a teenager in Ashotsk or Artik who receives eighty hours of structured computing instruction, mentorship from a working professional, and a functioning laptop to keep is measurably more likely to enrol in a STEM-adjacent tertiary programme or find remote employment than a peer who does not.
The curriculum runs in three sequential ten-week cohorts each academic year, each cohort capped at twenty-two students aged 14 to 18, selected through an application reviewed jointly by school principals and our field coordinators, with quotas reserved for students from single-parent households and children of families receiving state family benefits. Cohort One covers digital literacy fundamentals, touch typing, spreadsheet logic, and internet safety across sixteen two-hour sessions. Cohort Two, open to graduates of Cohort One or students who test in, covers introductory web development — HTML, CSS, and JavaScript fundamentals — across twenty sessions, culminating in each student publishing a personal portfolio site. Cohort Three, our most selective, is a twenty-four-session applied track in either basic Python data analysis or graphic design software, chosen by the student, and ends with a public demo day in Gyumri's Vernissage Hall where local employers and university admissions staff are invited to review student projects.
Referral pathways matter as much as the classroom hours. Students who show particular aptitude are referred to Gyumri State Pedagogical University's Faculty of Physics and Mathematics for its youth summer school, or to our own alumni mentorship line, which pairs a graduate with a working Armenian software developer — many based in Yerevan or in the diaspora — for monthly video calls over the following year. We track four indicators: session attendance rate (target above 85%), pre/post digital literacy assessment score gain (target average gain of 35 percentage points), the share of graduates who enrol in any tertiary or vocational technical programme within eighteen months (currently 61%), and a qualitative annual survey capturing whether graduates feel more confident navigating government e-services and job platforms independently.
Local partners anchor the programme's legitimacy and its low overhead. School No. 21 and School No. 5 in Gyumri host classroom space rent-free; the Shirak Marzpetaran's Department of Education co-signs the annual outreach letter sent to all regional schools; Gyumri State Pedagogical University provides two adjunct instructors each cohort at reduced rates; and the Ashotsk Community Cooperative helps identify and transport students from the marz's more remote highland villages, where winter road closures would otherwise make attendance impossible. Laptops are refurbished units sourced through a partnership with a Yerevan-based IT recycler and a diaspora donation drive coordinated through Armenian community organisations in Los Angeles and Glendale.
The annual budget for this programme, roughly 38,000 USD (about 15.6 million AMD), breaks down as follows: 34% instructor stipends and curriculum development, 27% hardware (laptops, routers, projectors) and hardware maintenance, 18% transport and winter-village outreach logistics, 12% venue costs and the annual demo day, and 9% monitoring, evaluation, and alumni tracking. It is staffed by two full-time coordinators, one part-time technical instructor, and an average of nine volunteers per cohort, most of them university students or diaspora professionals visiting Armenia for the summer, working alongside four ongoing local partners.
The long-term human impact is best told through one graduate we can share with permission: Lilit, who joined Cohort One in Ashotsk in 2016 at age fifteen, had never used a computer with an internet connection before her first session. She completed all three cohort tracks, was referred to our alumni mentorship line and paired with a Yerevan-based backend developer, and is now, at 23, a junior data analyst for an agritech startup working with farmers in her home region — a full circle her mentor still marvels at. She is one of 640 graduates since 2013, and while not every graduate's trajectory is as linear, our eighteen-month follow-up data consistently shows the programme does what it was designed to do: convert isolation into option.
Programme 02
Women's Empowerment & Micro-Finance in Lori
Launched in 2015 in Vanadzor and now active across nine Lori communities, our Women's Empowerment and Micro-Finance programme addresses a stubborn statistic: women in Lori's smaller towns and villages are formally employed at roughly half the rate of men, and the gap widens sharply for women over 40 or those raising children alone. The programme combines a twelve-week business literacy course with a peer-guaranteed micro-loan fund, on the conviction — borne out by three years of repayment data — that credit without training fails as often as training without credit.
Cohorts of fifteen women meet weekly for three months, covering bookkeeping, pricing, basic marketing, and legal registration as a sole proprietor or cooperative member. Graduates may apply to our revolving loan fund for amounts between 150,000 and 900,000 AMD, guaranteed through five-woman solidarity groups rather than collateral, at a service rate far below commercial micro-lenders. Loan officers conduct monthly site visits for the first year. We track loan repayment rate (currently 94%), business survival at eighteen months (71%), average household income change among participants, and a qualitative indicator of participants' self-reported financial decision-making authority within the household.
Vanadzor's Women's Resource Center co-delivers the curriculum; the Lori Marzpetaran's Department of Social Affairs refers applicants from its social welfare rolls; the Stepanavan Agricultural Cooperative absorbs several graduates into its supply chain as producers of preserves and dried fruit; and Gyumri State University's economics faculty periodically supplies student interns who assist with bookkeeping clinics. The annual budget of roughly 52,000 USD divides as: 46% the loan capital pool, 22% trainer and loan-officer salaries, 14% curriculum materials and venue hire, 10% monitoring and repayment administration, 8% contingency and default reserve. Staff comprises three loan officers, one trainer, and around fourteen active volunteer bookkeeping mentors, working with four core partners.
Zaruhi, a widow in Stepanavan with three children, joined the programme in 2018 with a small home dried-fruit business earning barely enough for groceries. Her 300,000 AMD loan financed a proper drying unit and packaging; five years on she supplies two Vanadzor grocers and employs two seasonal workers, one of them a graduate of a later cohort. She now sits on our community advisory panel, reviewing new applicants' business plans herself.
Programme 03
Equal Rights & Free Legal Advocacy for Minorities
Founded in 2017, our Equal Rights and Free Legal Advocacy programme provides no-cost legal consultation and representation to ethnic, religious, linguistic, and sexual minorities across Armenia, with a particular focus on Yezidi communities in Aragatsotn, Molokan communities in Lori, and LGBTQ individuals nationwide facing housing or employment discrimination. Armenia's minority populations frequently lack the resources or trust in formal institutions to pursue legal remedies, and our lawyers exist to close that gap without asking clients to pay or publicly out themselves.
The service operates through a rotating legal clinic: two staff lawyers and a network of eleven pro-bono partner attorneys take referrals via a confidential hotline and a secure online intake form, triaging cases into direct representation, mediated settlement, or referral to the Armenian Bar Association's own aid scheme when capacity is exceeded. Each accepted case is tracked from intake through resolution, with average case duration currently 4.2 months. We measure cases resolved favourably (68% of closed cases in the last reporting year), client satisfaction via anonymous post-case survey, average time-to-first-consultation (under 5 days), and the number of systemic advocacy briefs filed with municipal or national bodies (11 in the past year).
Partners include the Yezidi National Union, which refers cases and provides Kurmanji-language interpretation; the Aragatsotn Marzpetaran's civil registry office, which cooperates on documentation disputes; PINK Armenia, with whom we co-run confidential intake for LGBTQ clients; and the American University of Armenia's law clinic, whose students assist with legal research under attorney supervision. The annual budget of approximately 61,000 USD allocates 51% to attorney and staff compensation, 19% to interpretation and accessibility services, 15% to case-related administrative and court costs for clients unable to pay filing fees, 9% to public legal-literacy materials, and 6% to monitoring and case management software.
One case that shaped our advocacy priorities involved a Yezidi family in a village near Aparan denied a land-use permit renewal apparently on discriminatory grounds; our attorney's eight-month effort secured the renewal and prompted the marzpetaran to issue clearer written guidance to prevent recurrence — a systemic fix reaching far beyond the original family.
Programme 04
Community Innovation Hubs in Yerevan and Gyumri
Since 2019, our Community Innovation Hubs in Yerevan's Nork-Marash district and central Gyumri have provided free co-working space, equipment, and structured programming to residents aged 16 to 30 who lack access to reliable internet, quiet workspace, or professional networks. Each hub runs open-access hours alongside scheduled programming: weekly startup ideation circles, monthly guest-speaker sessions with Armenian entrepreneurs, and quarterly hackathons focused on civic or social problems.
The Gyumri hub, housed in a renovated Soviet-era cultural building shared with the municipality, hosts roughly 40 regular users per month and has incubated eleven small ventures since opening, three of which have secured outside seed funding. The Yerevan hub, smaller and newer, focuses more on the transition from our Shirak tech-inclusion graduates into freelance and remote work, offering CV clinics and freelance-platform onboarding sessions twice monthly. We track monthly active users, venture survival at one year, hours of free equipment use logged, and participant self-assessed confidence in pursuing entrepreneurial or freelance income.
The Gyumri Municipality co-hosts the space at nominal rent; the Union of Information Technology Enterprises (UITE) provides guest mentors from its Yerevan membership; Gyumri State Pedagogical University refers advanced tech-inclusion graduates; and a rotating group of diaspora entrepreneurs mentors ventures remotely. The combined annual budget across both hubs, approximately 44,000 USD, allocates 40% facility and equipment costs, 25% programming and guest honoraria, 20% staff, 10% venture micro-grants of up to 200,000 AMD for early prototyping, and 5% monitoring.
Vahagn, a 24-year-old from Gyumri, used the hub's open hours over eight months to build a small logistics-tracking app for local delivery couriers; it now runs in three towns and employs two part-time developers he trained himself at the hub's evening sessions.
Programme 05
Agricultural Tech Support for Farmers in Tavush
Launched in 2020 in response to Tavush farmers' repeated requests for help modernising irrigation and market access, our Agricultural Tech Support programme now serves 14 villages including Ijevan, Berd, and Noyemberyan-area communities near the Azerbaijani border, where farming continues under real security constraints. The programme distributes low-cost soil-moisture sensors and drip-irrigation kits, trains farmers in their use and in basic online marketplace sales, and connects cooperatives to buyers in Yerevan through a shared logistics arrangement.
Training runs as a six-session seasonal course before each planting season, covering sensor calibration, water-scheduling based on sensor data, post-harvest storage basics, and creating simple online product listings. We measure water-use reduction on participating plots (average 31% reduction versus prior-season baseline), yield stability during drought months, the number of farmers completing at least one direct online sale, and cooperative membership retention. Partners include the Ijevan Fruit and Berry Cooperative, the Tavush Marzpetaran's Department of Agriculture, the Armenian National Agrarian University's extension office, and a Yerevan-based produce distributor who guarantees a minimum weekly purchase from participating cooperatives.
The annual budget of about 47,000 USD allocates 44% equipment (sensors, drip kits, storage aids), 21% training and extension staff, 18% cooperative logistics subsidy for the first transport season, 11% market-access support and online listing assistance, and 6% monitoring including soil and yield data collection.
Karen, a fourth-generation orchardist near Ijevan whose apple yields had suffered three consecutive dry summers, adopted drip irrigation and sensor scheduling in 2021; his water use dropped by a third while yield recovered to pre-drought levels, and he now mentors two neighbouring farmers new to the programme each season.
Programme 06
Mental Health & Trauma Support Services
Established in 2021 following the 2020 Artsakh war, our Mental Health and Trauma Support Services programme provides free counselling, group therapy, and referral to psychiatric care for displaced families, veterans, and border-community residents experiencing acute stress, grief, or trauma-related conditions. It operates primarily in Yerevan and Vanadzor with an outreach circuit reaching Tavush border villages monthly.
Services include individual counselling (typically eight to twelve sessions), grief and trauma-focused group therapy circuits of ten weekly sessions capped at eight participants, and a psychiatric referral pathway for cases requiring medication management. We track intake-to-first-session wait time (currently under 10 days, well below the national average), standardised PHQ-9 and PCL-5 score improvement across treatment, group completion rate, and client-reported functional improvement (return to work, school, or caregiving capacity). Partners include the Armenian Psychological Association, which supplies supervised trainee clinicians; Nairi Clinic in Yerevan, which accepts referred cases requiring psychiatric medication at reduced cost; the Tavush Marzpetaran's social affairs office, which identifies border-village households in acute need; and Vanadzor's regional hospital, which hosts our weekly outreach clinic.
The annual budget of roughly 66,000 USD allocates 55% clinician salaries and supervision, 18% subsidised psychiatric referral costs for clients without insurance, 14% outreach transport to border villages, 8% training and clinical supervision for trainee counsellors, and 5% monitoring and clinical record systems, operated to strict confidentiality standards described further on our research page.
We share client stories only with explicit, revocable consent, and most choose privacy; one veteran who did consent, referred to here only as A., completed both the individual and group tracks after two years of untreated insomnia and anger following his 2020 service, and now volunteers as a peer greeter at our Vanadzor outreach sessions, telling new arrivals simply that showing up was the hardest and most useful thing he ever did.
Evaluation ethics
Measured honestly, published in full
No beneficiary is required to share a personal story in exchange for a service, no photograph is taken without written and revocable consent, and no result on this page is reported without the underlying methodology being available in our annual reports. Where a programme underperformed, we say so.