After the capital, the Caravan team moved to the town of Hrazdan in the Kotayk region, where they held a number of events for local residents and activists on 12 August. We tried to capture the atmosphere of these meetings in Harut Chotinyan’s photo report.

The meetings in Hrazdan dealt with a variety of topics.

Tigran Mughnetsyan (Armenia) organised a discussion on the effectiveness of public administration in Armenia.

Discussion had two main parts, initially there was discussed public management challenges in theory and its application in Armenian realm.

During second part there was group works, where participants aimed to identify public management issues and provide specific and tangible solutions. First group elaborated on city demographics, while the second group presented their vision on the higher education and Meister schools prospects in Armenia.

Ani Kojoyan (Armenia) lecturer at YSU, Youth is Power NGO leading trainer and expert of language, gender and communication studies held a training session (gender mainstreaming in inclusive education) focused on the issues in the field and the mechanisms how to respond those issues.

The audience was very active, among them there were school teachers and educators, social workers and psychologists.

They shared their experiences and provided vivid examples from their own lives. They came up with a number of suggestions and questions. The session was finalized by the video watching on gender stereotypes and their perception by school children.

The next training Ani gave was called “Critical Thinking. Media Literacy Tool”.

Target Group: “Bruntsk” NGO, young people, youth workers.

Challenges: Lack of Critical Knowledge in general, interpretation of media and its discourses.

Suggested solution/ perspectives: capacity building of NGO sector, school students, community developers.

Workshop transferred saying: “Media discourses are never neutral. In order to be or become able to analyze and evaluate those discourses, and make own judgment, we need to develop the so-called media immunity through reliable tools and techniques, among them the most reliable one is critical thinking”.

Meeting was organized in cooperation with Հրազդանի համայնքապետարան and «Հայի բռունցք» հասարակական կազմակերպություն.

Narine Teknejyan (Armenia), the cofounder and educational project manager at Youth is Power NGO leaded a workshop dedicated to effective communication specifically non violent communication.

Evgeny Goshev (Bulgaria/Georgia) initiated a discussion on how culture determines the vision of the past, present and future of the Eastern Partnership countries.

The event revolved about the way people in general and Armenians in particular perceive their culture. 

The event was based on questions and vivid discussions on various aspects of culture as well as on scientific research into the Armenian diaspora. 

The final part of the event was work in groups which helped the participants reflect on the way they perceive their cultural identity. 

The friendly and relaxed atmosphere was enriched by a religious song and by an Armenian folk dance.

On 13 August the Caravan will move to Armavir.

Caravan is organized by Eastern-European Association for Citizenship Education under support of the Federal Agency of Citizenship Education of Germany (bpb) and funded by German Foreign Office. NGO “Youth is Power” is local partner of Caravan.

Reed also:

See the preliminary program of the Caravan in Armenia

EENCE Citizenship Education Caravan kicked off in Armenia. See the big photo report!