Last year, the American government provided $236 million to implement the “Millennium Challenges” program in Armenia and founded an office in Armenia, boards of directors and benefactors and other departments for that purpose.
The most active department of this institution seems to be the board of benefactors, especially the sector of non-governmental organizations. The mentioned board of benefactors consists of 15 members, nine out of which are social figures: Nazeli Vardanyan (head of “Armenian Forests” NGO), Larisa Minasyan (member of “Collaboration in favor of open society”), Levon Barseghyan (head of “Asparez” club board), etc. They have organized seminars and discussions and informed the public that they are going to make it so the implemented programs are transparent
Besides the civic sector, several months ago the organization elected the head of its Armenian headquarters. However, ever since that, the organization hasn’t even done anything.. Notwithstanding, the board of the “Millennium Challenges” program (Andranik Margaryan, Vardan Khachatryan, Andranik Manoukian, Hovik Abrahamyan, David Lokyan are board members too) is organizing discussions periodically, but they are not open to the public. As for the board of benefactors, it periodically informs the public about its activities since it mostly consists of non-governmental organizations. Perhaps they do this due to the fact that their organizations are non-governmental; they often get grants from international organizations and thus they should be accountable for the work they are doing and distribute information about their activities. Perhaps this is the requirement set by the American donor organization. Anyway, whatever it is, if the board of benefactors did not make everything transparent and did not inform about their activities, we would have already forgotten about the “Millennium Challenges” project in Armenia”.
Finance Minister of Armenia Vardan Khachatryan hoped we would receive a part of that money in September and would start implementing that program in the same month. Nevertheless, the U.S. has not put money in Armenia’s bank account yet. Maybe they want to be sure that the necessary materials for road reconstruction will not be purchased from Iran. We know that the relations between the U.S. and Iran are complicated and it is clear that the U.S. does not want Armenia to purchase materials from Iran with the money they are giving us Armenians. Perhaps this is the reason why they still haven’t reconstructed the Komitas and Tigran Mets streets of Yerevan. Those streets are being reconstructed by the “Lins” program and funding is provided by American Armenians. It is said that America has prohibited buying materials from Iran with American money. Currently the Armenians are looking for other diversified sources of importing the necessary materials. It is not excluded that they may import those goods from Iran but write something else in the documentation of another country. Anyway, the parties are currently solving political issues.
Anyway, the Americans are supervising the implementation of the program, while the Armenians are looking for new ways to fulfill the requirements. The only problem is that the money given as part of the “Millennium Challenges” program still hasn’t been received and it is clear that the project implementation won’t start anytime this year. The money is to be spent on reducing poverty in village communities. The money will be spent in mainly two fields: road construction and water supply system reconstruction. The goal of the program is to enable farmer economies to water their lands and get good harvest, and later transport their products to different markets for sale. It is no secret that the roads and the paths connecting village communities with regional/central cities are in poor conditions and have not been reconstructed since the Soviet era. The water supply system is in poor conditions too. In a word, Armenia needs that money and the board of benefactors should make sure that everything is transparent, make sure the board and the other departments are not corrupted and inform the society and the American branch about the program implementation and its effectiveness. However, the board has decided how it is going to do all that. They are periodically renting halls, organizing seminars, working on the by-laws and other relevant charts and distributing information.
What can we Armenians do? This is how non-governmental organizations are, especially when they don’t do anything but want to show the people that they have done something.