Audemars Piguet Foundation - An innovative project in Armenia
Renewing ties with nature
These days, the pupils of twenty schools in northern Armenia are simply unbeatable on the topic of environmental protection. This is just one of the benefits of the nature conservation awareness-raising programme run by NGO Shen and funded by the Audemars Piguet Foundation.
Hundreds of plum trees and rose bushes planted around the schools involve testify to the success of the project initiated in the autumn of 2006. They are the visible tokens of an endeavour involving training teachers and organising in-school and extra-curricular classes, as well as creating a Friends of Nature network set up by the Shen activity leaders.
Rebuilding
After the devastating 1998 earthquake, professors and students at the Erevan Polytechnical School created a NGO dedicated to the physical, economic and educational reconstruction of the building. Despite the upheavals of independence and the longstanding conflict in the Upper Karabakh region, Shen - which means "prosperous community" in Armenian - has continued its work among rural communities.
Via the Swiss Protestant Aid (EPER) organisation, Shen requested funding from the Audemars Piguet Foundation to cover a project aimed at promoting the environmental education of children in three northern areas of the country: Tavush, Kotayk and Shirak, encompassing a catchment population of over 30,000 inhabitants.
Evaluating
One of the particularly unfortunate legacies of the communist era is that the country now finds itself with a seriously degraded natural environment and a population little aware of the need to protect its surroundings.
In an initial phase, the programme focused on pinpointing the educational needs in terms of environmental knowledge, and then on selecting schools with motivated teachers and plots of land suitable for creating organic gardens for the future project beneficiaries. The programme began with cleaning up the land near the schools..
Training
The following stage involved training 70 teachers on ecological issues and in using participatory pedagogical methods. A multidisciplinary team created material tailored to 14 and 15 year-olds, the main targets of the action. Combining instruction, discussions, trips and practical work, the programme thus established is now implemented by several schools in the country.
Uniting
To ensure its action achieves the greatest possible impact, Shen has set up a network of parents designed to unite the project beneficiaries in various communities. By publishing tracts and organising meetings with local authorities, along with holding competitions and writing reports on such activities for the local media, these groups have managed to spread the news about the environmental protection awareness-raising efforts to a broad public. Women have played a crucial role throughout the programme.
Ensuring follow-up
One of the main initial difficulties lay in the school authorities' reluctance to overload school curricula with a new subject. Thanks to its contacts with the Ministry of Education and local leaders, the NGO managed to have ecology instated as an optional subject in the country's schools. Maintenance of the gardens created since 2006 and of their irrigation networks remains an essential factor in the follow-up to this operation.