anniversary of the election

So you'll probably remember the Iranian elections last year, charges of corruption. Protesting in the streets. Excessive force and police brutality? Yeah?
Well, the same thing on a smaller and quieter scale happened here in Armenia two years ago. Charges of voter fraud for the winning party. Demand of a recount.
So this went down in Armenia in 2008 and people took to the streets and occupied the main city square and camped there, refusing to leave for like (2 weeks?). The military finally gets the go-ahead to clear em out and does so with clubs and mace and firehoses, beating the tar out of peaceful protesters. 10 people died. No police were ever charged with excessive force or misconduct. (See: http://www.hrw.org/europecentral-asia/armenia)
So last year there was an anniversary protest and more clashes. Some arrests. Some estimate there were 15,000 protesters.

Today was the second anniversary and there was a protest scheduled to take place at the Matenadaran, a national museum. I had forgotten about it til I was heading home on foot and walked past a dozen army dudes in camo, loitering next to a park outside of their paddywagon. I decided to take a detour and go check out the demonstration.
The goal was to be kind of an observer and should shit go down between the police and protesters, I had my camera. Try to document from the fringe without getting involve. I stood there a while and watched the crowd listen to speakers. Don't know what they were saying but the crowd was getting a little fired up. I was kind of waiting to see, because I had heard they were supposed to march through the city, but as it started to get dark, I eventually got sick of waiting for something to happen, as I've been to enough protests where all you end up doing is wait for something to happen. But I caught a video of the crowd and the police and military in their furry soviet-style hats and old men eating and spitting sunflower seeds. Very popular here. If the video goes through, it might give you a view of a little slice of Armenian life.

Its interesting to see something like this firsthand. I have to remind myself...this is all new in Armenia. I mean, democracy is only about 20 years old here. And the development of freedom of the press, freedom to protest. These are still being contested. And they are sometimes trampled by the government. Media is Armenia is kind of considered to be a joke. I went to a conference last week put on by the Open Society Institute about media coverage of news etc (well, that was one part of the conference. The conference was regarding the protection and monitoring of human rights in Armenia, which is a slightly bigger can of worms). But my point is...this was all really shaky. Meaning that nobody really seemed to know or trust what the other side was going to do. They haven't gotten used to this whole democracy thing yet. Either side. The government or the opposition.

I do wonder if anything happened. Keep you posted.

here are a few miscellaneous pictures as well:





yeah, thats a stray feral dog on a fuckin roof. i saw that and its like "great, now i don't only have to worry about them coming out of the alleys at me, snarling. I have to fear them coming down from above? Awesome."

micro loans

This is how I know I’m becoming a social worker:
I get a little tipsy in the evening. Might be watching a movie on my laptop. I start thinking about ways in which I can do better at my internship. Start thinking about creative approaches to what I’ve been trying to start. You see, the 8 hours of fluorescent lights can kill anyone’s creativity. I am starting to make this my life. It fills my spare time, or seeps in at least, not because I feel obligated or stressed or worry that I’m not doing enough. Maybe I worry I’m not doing enough a bit. But it really seeps in because I like this. Not the CV-filling trainings and powerpoints and conference attendance. What I like is coming at something from new angles. And not reinventing the wheel, either. Just coming at this with strategy and the freedom of free thinking.
I’ve been working on developing microenterprise in Armenia for refugees. Like I said, not reinventing the wheel. And nothing too big. But there are already active banks in Armenia that have a program to make small loans to the poorest of the poor. See: grameenbank.com So this is already a part of the situation. The banks are there. But refugees are not accessing this resource in this country. Now, as you can imagine, banks don’t necessarily actively pursue loans to the most ineligible members of a society. Refugees that have just come to country X with nothing. (Read: no collateral for a loan). That’s my job. Bring them in. So! I’ve been looking at finding a curriculum to hold workshops in Armenia to expose these communities to the possibility that they might get a loan from a bank for a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, to launch a small business. One example is a ethnic-Armenian Iraqi war refugee that resettled here and got a loan. Started a potato chip-making shop in his garage. Now he’s got an income to feed his family (not just potato chips, hopefully). But so, yeah. Find a training to educate refugees that this is even an option. What is a micro loan. What banks are doing it in Armenia. How do I apply. What will I have to do to pay it back. Like I said, dollars to donuts, someone has already developed a workshop for this. Some kind of training. But I have to find it (research) and then start doing it.
I’m operating on the assumption that I will find someone else’s powerpoint/ PDFs/ word doc and its ready for me to administer. An assumption, yes. Wouldn’t be the worst thing to have to do it myself, but like I said: why reinvent the wheel. But so now we are at the second part. Doing the trainings and disseminating this information. Planting the seeds. Not as easy. The first hurdle is that I don’t speak Armenian or Arabic or Azeri or even Russian. These are the languages used by refugees here, for the most part. I can do it in English. But I will need a translator. I can get files translated here, but I will need someone translating my dialogue, would I hold a workshop. I had been stalled out. Thinking about getting another UNHCR staff to come along. And that works ok, but honestly, everyone has their own workweek to attend to. I wont be able to go out to this village one day, and that town the next, with some full-time, paid UNHCR staff in tow to translate for me. Not going to happen. So what do I do?
I was just thinking about this and I realized, I’m going about this wrong. Thinking of myself as the guy to do it. Not so. The banks don’t seem to want to. Fine. Not a dead end, but not a safe bet. So: build a pyramid. Get the training translated, and then train the trainers. That’s much more sustainable. I hold a few workshops for local staff of NGOs who are working with the refugees. Train them on the processes and get them the information so that they can spread it out, too. Now, I’d rather go straight to the source. But I had been thinking it was one or the other. A,B.
From another angle, I recently discovered Kiva. www.kiva.org Kiva is an online community that partners with local small banks in the 3rd world. The bank says “We have villager X who wants to sell fruit at the market and wants a loan. Villager Y needs a few more livestock for his farm and wants a loan, etc” These villagers get their picture taken, get a profile written and then its posted on the kiva website. Here’s where you and I come in. The profile is posted and then my Mom or your uncle can surf prospective borrowers off the site. Villager X needs $500 USD. My Mom donates $50 and your uncle donates $100. After a couple of days, the money has been pooled all over the world. My mom and your uncle can pay with PayPal. Super easy. The money goes from their accounts to kiva (a non-profit), who disburses the money to the small bank in Cambodia or Armenia. And then the bank gets the money to the villager. My mom and your uncle will be repaid into their kiva accound if and when Villager X makes payment on the loan (a risk). But the kiva folks don’t receive interest on their amounts they pony up. So here, you have an organic, grassroots bank, going (largely) from the developed world to the third world. Interest rates are kept a little lower, because the small bank doesn’t have to pay the interest back to kiva, so your uncle keeps operational costs down for this struggling, small, third-world bank. Awesome. I highly recommend checking out the site. Its pretty cool.
I bet a lot of y’all already knew this. So don’t worry, you won’t burst my bubble. I’m late for the party. But I want to help this grow and spread as I can. So here’s to becoming more of a social work-y nerd. I love this shit.

And the self-awareness:
I attended a conference today by myself, representing UNHCR. "Human Rights Protection in Armenia through Capacity Building of Selected NGOs". God, it was boring. But i got to thinking. I've got my strengths. I think I do alright in small groups. Decent conversationalist. I listen ok. Ask decent quetions. I make eye-contact. I can even be charming. But I am no good at working a room. Coffee-break at noon. Lunch at 1:30. I was by myself. Recognized a few people. The lawyer from the states from the law school of American University of Armenia. A couple of people from United Nations Development Program in the UN building I see at lunch sometimes. But you put me in a room of 80 mingling peoiple. Forget it. I scurry to the corner and hole up like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, to quote Rogue from the X-Men. I did no networking, which was part of the deal. Schmooze. Get some business cards. Talk up UNHCR and let people know 'we' were there. No good. I sucked down a coffee and went back into the empty room to text someone. Schmoose: FAIL. Something to work on. We've all got strengths. You gotta see your weaknesses to grow. I totally have a mild case of room-full-of-people Social Anxiety Disorder. Can't do it. Such is life.