Arthur, who has gone to the war front during the first days of the Artsakh war, already had 6 children at the time.
Currently, there are ten children (three boys and seven girls) and they are waiting for their 11th child to be born. It has been 5 years since the family settled in the village of Varanda in the Martuni region. According to Artur, they got a three room house in Varanda when they had their eighth child. At the present, they have another home in the village which was given to them a couple of years ago. The 12 member family currently lives in the three bedroom house which needs to be renovated.
The oldest of the children is 19 years old and the youngest is nine months old. Bank accounts have opened up in the name of the 8th, 9th and 10th children and the percents received each month are transferred to the parents. According to Arthur, the family’s monthly income is 50,000 drams which is not enough for a 12 member family; especially when two of the children are paying for their tuition in one of the universities of Stepanakert. During our interview, we found out that the school is in the village is for eight years and Arthur was forced to send one of the kids to the capital city-Stepanakert-in order for him to get a higher education. We must mention the fact that the parents have to send each of their kids to the capital city because the 9th and 10th graders at the village school have to go by foot to the neighboring village, and that is far from Varanda by a couple of kilometers.
“Everyone knows that it is hard to pay for the education of two university students and one student in school, especially for a large family,” says A. Khachatryan.
The family grows vegetables and is produces wheat.
“I can barely produce wheat on four hectors of land and that wheat is enough for our family. I can’t say that we are living well, we are simply surviving and we have many unsolved problems. Those problems have to do with lack of finances,” says Arthur.
He believes that a 12 member family needs a minimum of 150,000 drams a month in order to survive. Although the family lives in poor conditions, the father says that the 11th will not be the last child because he plans on having a very large family. “True, it is hard now, but I hope that later on our children will reach their goals because we are doing our best to help them out,” says Arthur Khachatryan.
While talking about family problems, Arthur’s wife Alina Sevlikyan has some complaints. She says that they used to get help from the Armenian Evangelical Association for one child, but after the child turned 16, they stopped helping and the younger child did not get any help. With this said, we asked the representative of the Stepanakert branch of the Armenian Evangelical Association Arsen Manasaryan and he affirmed that the family had stopped receiving help for two reasons: first, the sponsor refused, secondly, the family moved from Stepanakert to the village of Varanda where the association does not implement programs. He also said that the sponsor, according to the contract, finances the family until the child is 16 years of age, after which the sponsor decides whether to help or not. According to A. Manasaryan, the association implements the program of helping large families in Stepanakert, in the centers of the Republic of Karabagh and some villages, including rehabilitating villages but not all of them.
Alina, mother of ten, said during our interview.
“We need help from the sponsors. I have asked many people, but I have not gotten a positive response from any of them to this day. I would like to see people who will be sponsors and pay for the tuition of two students”