According to the executive director, Naira Milkman, they will be happy even if they collect 6 million dollars. According to her, people usually get active during the marathon and than when it stops, they start to change their minds. Till now the sum that has been transferred to the foundation account covers 3,5 million, 800000 of which has been collected in Armenia. It is worth mentioning that last year the foundation collected about 12 million dollars, i.e. it collected more than five million. People interpreted this differently. Some said that the reason for the decrease was the fact that people were not satisfied with the fund’s work efficiency and effectiveness and that is why they don’t transfer money any more. But the head of the foundation doesn’t agree with this. “I can contradict all these ideas by bringing up some numbers. When I was appointed president of the fund back in 2003, we ended the year with a balance of 4,5 million dollars. In 2005, we ended it with a balance of 12,7 million dollars”.
Mrs. Melkumyan drew comparisons with Telethon 2005 and the previous year. She says that this past year, there were more new projects. This year they are mainly focusing on Karabakh and the Martakert region. The donations will be directed towards improving agriculture.
“To this day, we have been mainly occupied with road construction. That was a simple program and, based on certain calculations, the price for each meter is 150 dollars. This year’s projects are different. We are going to reconstruct the main water tubes of Martakert region, which are 30 kilometers long. We have also planned some agricultural development programs. We are going to purchase agricultural technical facilities worth about $700000-1000000 and are going to hire specialists from Yerevan to supervise”.
It is strange but according to Mrs. Melkumyan the farmers of Martakert don’t know what to breed in their own land. The specialists from Yerevan are going to teach them what to do and how to work in their own gardens. In the first phase the fund may give seeds to people. They have already got different offers from foreign companies. According to Mrs. Melkumyan this program is also very important in that they will have direct contact with the villagers. “This program is very important because it is moving from the humanitarian perspective to more of a development project,” says head of the fund.
The project is also aimed towards reconstructing the hospital of Martakert. According to the director of the foundation, the donators have not been informed about these programs. This is the reason why there were fewer donations this year. According to Melkumyan, the effectiveness of this program will serve grounds for future donations.
The next telethon will be for the Hadrut region. According to Mrs. Melkumyan this program may be prolonged after these three years if the donators see the effectiveness and agree with them. Melkumyan adds that they prepare an audit for each program. During the last program, there were some rumors claiming that the Karabagh authorities were also disappointed about their work and this resulted in a conflict between the authorities of Karabakh and the fund administration. “The authorities of Karabakh can’t demand such things because the sums are to be transferred to the central office of the foundation and the central office is the one that is responsible for implementing programs. They can’t transfer such sums to the Government because the government doesn’t have anything to do with taking taxes”.
Mrs. Melkumyan didn’t agree with these rumors and said that the authorities of Karabakh assisted them in implementing their programs: “They know very well about the mechanisms and how the fund works. As for these rumors, I don’t care about what they think”. It is worth mentioning that mostly Diaspora Armenians were against appointing Mrs. Melkumyan as head of the fund. The majority of the people were from Los-Angeles and now a lot of people complain about the work done by the fund.