On February 22, 2014 a group of three Armenian legal-judicial professionals - judge of the first instance court of Aragatsotn Marz Ruzanna Barseghyan, a defense attorney Inessa Petrosyan, Professor of Law Artur Ghambaryan, accompanied by the AM CALLS Program manager Dzyunik Vanesyan arrived to the State of Vermont to participate in a study tour for expanding their awareness of best practices in administration of Restorative Justice for juveniles.
The winners of the AM CALLS Program Small Grants call are already selected. A total of 10 NGOs representing 10 Armenian communities launched their projects: “Dilijan branch of Bridge of Hope” with its “Jointly and equally“ project the objective of which is to raise the legal awareness of the students, teachers and parents and promote school-teacher-parent partnerships; “Young Tavush”, with its “Raising legal and civic awareness to reduce risky behavior cases“ project the objective of which is to raise legal and civic awareness of students from 15 communities in Ijevan, Noyemberyan and Berd in order to reduce risky behavior cases among the difficult juveniles; “Partnership and Teaching”, with its project “My right of being protected” the objective of which is to reveal and prevent cases of violence towards the juveniles and raise juvenile awareness on their rights; “Kapan Child Center”, with its project “ Promoting the rule of law”, the objective of which is to prevent juvenile crime, promote juvenile offenders' reintegration in the society, develop a tolerant and fair community equipped with legal knowledge, “Dignified Generation”, with the project “Legally aware citizens” the objective of which is to work with the juveniles to develop individuals adhering to proper mental and behavioral norms posed by the society, “Children’s Support Center”, with the project “Juvenile offense: prevention and integration, the objective of which is to have society without juvenile offenders in Hrazdan community through reducing the re-offense rate and promoting criminal justice system in Armenia based on children rights.
As a follow up of successful cooperation between PH International and the Ministry of Justice, a separate project was proposed and submitted by the state non-commercial organization “Special Art Center for Juvenile Offenders” operating under the MoJ. A mini-grant was nominated to the center for the implementation of a leadership and personal growth project for a group of children from families in which one of the parents is currently a prisoner.
On Nov. 15, 2013, the Central Bank’s Dilijan Center of “Knowledge for Development” hosted the ACCESS program students and their guests from Yerevan: Aleksandr Shagafyan, Project Coordinator of U.S. Alumni Association of Armenia, and Rouben Mirakyan, Fulbright Program Alumnus, the founder of Armenian E-books, who spoke to the students about their career development. Afterwards, Mariam Martirosyan of PHI talked to the students about her professional path and shared with students her ideas about leadership and management. Then the group learnt about popular styles of leadership and discussed which style is best to apply in which situation.
On November 15, 2013 PH International Armenia Country Director Mariam Martirosyan and Hounan Poghosyan, First Deputy Minister of RA Police, Major General, signed an Agreement to reinforce the cooperative implementation of PHI's Community Action and Linkages for Legal Socialization Program (AM CALLS) which supports many components of the Child Rights Protection National Plan.
Throughout October 22-26, within the AM CALLS program, 4 towns of Armenia, namely Gyumri, Vanadzor, Metsamor and Echmiadzin, hosted World Café format based Community Dialogues to explore problems concerning local youth, especially those living in difficult conditions, and to come up with citizen action plans to solve those problems.
Within the Armenia Community Action and Linkages for Legal Socialization (AM CALLS) program, throughout October 19-22 three trainees from Vanadzor, Gyumri and Yerevan together with a group of 5 Armenian, Georgian and U.S. staff working for the Armenian and Georgian Legal Socialization Reform Programs, participated in a Training on Community Dialogues and Youth Opportunity Planning led by Diana Wahle, Collaboration and Planning Consultant from Vermont.
On Oct. 1-5, 2013 three Armenian students and two educators from Chambarak, Nor Hachn and Dilijan, Armenia that participate in PH International's Access Program, traveled to Kyiv to join Access Program's Summit with 23 other students and 10 teachers coming from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Georgia.
Throughout August 25-27, 54 high school students from 3 regional towns of Armenian, Nor Hachn, Dilijan and Chambarak, got together in Tsaghkadzor to participate in an intensive English language summer camp organized within the two-year English ACCESS Microscholarship Program. The program offers the only free-of-charge option for English classes in most of the participants’ communities.
In Sept. 2012, having begun the program with little to no competence of English, the students now got actively engaged in different English sessions related to youth role in movements for social change, on Web 2.0 technologies and social media, on cross-cultural differences, on environmental issues, etc.
On August 25-27, within its ZANG Legal Socialization program, the Armenian office of PHI organized a training on victim-offender mediation/restorative conferencing for 30 participants of its 10 Community Justice Centers (CJC), a representative from the Social-Psychological unit of the Ministry of Justice and the psychologist from the Abovyan Penitentiary. Lori Baker, a specialist holding an MA degree on mediation and with years of experience on mediating and managing a Vermont-based CJC herself, was hired from the U.S. to design the training module and facilitate the training in Armenia.
