The “state aid for children who have graduated from orphanages” program has been implemented in Armenia since 2003 and it forms part of the 10,000,000 dollar project financed by the EU committee. The Labor and Social Issues Ministry of Armenia and the Armenian Relief Society (ARS) have implemented the consequent stage of the project since January 2006.
This year, the state aid project is aimed towards fifty-six 18-year old orphans that have graduated from the Gyumri “Hope”, the Yerevan “Zatik” orphanages, as well as the orphanages in Gavar and Vanadzor. They will get residential areas mainly in the regions because each orphan only gets 8,000 dollars.
“Before starting the project, I thought that it would be hard to work with the orphans. It turned out that they have more dignity than anyone else, but at the same time they are afraid and insecure,” said ARS project coordinator Anna Mnatsakanyan.
Studies show that no matter how poor the conditions are in children’s clinics, the children are safe but in danger once out of the clinic.
“For example, the Gavar orphanage administration sends the child to Yerevan once he turns 18. Yerevan is like a large, dirty city for them. The nanny takes the food from the child, the child goes to get it and they call him a thief. The child is not a thief but he repeats what he is told. They show that they are clean. There are many promising orphans that can say good-bye to their future as soon as they step foot in the region. We mainly deal with defected orphans because nobody has paid any attention to them since 1991,” says A. Mnatsakanyan.
Based on studies on trafficking in Armenia, most women involved in trafficking in the United Emirates and Turkey are from the orphanages who haven’t had anything else to do and have taken that path to make money. Only one out of ten girls realizes that what she’s doing is called prostitution; the rest don’t know what they’re doing because they are perverted.
“There are rarely any women that like that job and the rest don’t have the chance to choose between bad and worse. If she’s a prostitute, then she’s worth 500 AMD (a dollar), doesn’t have a chance to make more money and that’s the sad part. Society reacts negatively towards them-if a female orphan gets married, then society considers the man defected. That’s why these children are extremely desperate, they don’t believe in anyone and that causes some psychological problems for them. Society doesn’t treat them right because people are certain that the child must be from an immoral family. The orphans of 1915 and today are different and the majority of the orphans today are foreigners,” says A. Mnatsakanyan.
The orphans say that as soon as their employers find out that they are orphans, they fire them. For example, Igor says that when he was working at the “ZigZag” electronic appliance store and his boss found out that he was an orphan, he gave him his paycheck for that month and fired him without making any offensive remarks. I tried to get details from “ZigZag”. Director of the company A. Mkrtchyan said that their workers never treat anyone like that, much less an orphan. After clarifying, he said that there was nobody by the name of Igor and said that that was “probably the boy’s subjective opinion.”
“You must be careful when starting the fight”
Artak Nalchajyan represents the “Aygabats” union, which deals with defending the social and legal issues of former Armenian orphans. Artur is also an orphan and is sometimes forced to hide that fact. Artur and his two sisters found themselves in the Gavar orphanage after the death of their parents. He left the orphanage in 1991 and got an apartment in the Yerevan-Zeytun community through the efforts of the state aid program in 2003.
“After the declaration of Armenia’s independence, the social/economic status deteriorated along with the situation of the orphans. During the Soviet era, they used to send orphans who ended studying at the orphanage to community colleges and each orphan had a child after graduation. They were under the control of the factory owner and were waiting to get an apartment. After 1991, this no longer worked. Each year 10-15 orphan graduates would leave the orphanage and more than 300 had communal problems. The state needed to lend a helping hand. Of course, the program went through difficulties in 2003-2005, but we can consider that a great achievement. The project began by former Minister of Labor and Social Issues Razmik Martirosyan, who couldn’t include international donors,” says A. Nalchajyan. Nalchajyan also says that society sets stereotypes for orphans.
“They need care and attention in order for them to serve society. I am working with orphans like myself. I have faced many hardships but I have realized that people fight in life. If you start to fight, then you have to be careful. You must establish the right human contacts and pick the right time to act so you can achieve. That’s the reason for my successes,” says the former orphan.
P.S. I didn’t state Artak Nalchajyan’s real name because he fears that he might have problems in the future with his job as a child that grew up in an orphanage.