“The oldest shoe in the world, Noravank, the great mountain of Areni…”

17-year-old Nare proudly lists the popular sights of her hometown, Areni. The cultural values ​​of Vayots Dzor, a southern region in Armenia, are now helping Nare to earn some money. This is her and friends’ first entrepreneurship experience, a possibility which was granted to the group of young people by Areni Municipality as part of the UNDP and EU “Mayors for Economic Development” (M4EG) joint initiative.

Nare’s team won the competition announced by the municipality. They used the granted funds to design images of landmarks, print them on eco-bags and t-shirts, and post them on wine bottles. The municipality also provided the marketplace. Those were the festivals organized in Areni community again as part of the M4EG program.

These are just a few initiatives of the complex and multi-layered community development program, which the Areni Municipality, as a Portfolio Community, has been implementing together with the UNDP M4EG team for two years now.

What does a Portfolio Community mean? The municipality employees are provided with a wide range of tools and resources to start working towards the sustainable development of their community, from helping them build new, effective governing skills to allocating them a certain amount of funds for the implementation of a series of initiatives with a Portfolio Approach of governance.

Areni is the first of the three Armenian communities that M4EG granted this opportunity. The inclusive, innovative approach of local government was applied at the very beginning, starting from the program development stage.

“Our task was to design not just another grant program, but a community development concept. This means an entire complex of interconnected sub-programs, which in the long run should lead to the improvement of the socio-economic conditions of the community,” says Suzan Margaryan, Coordinator of the Portfolio Program in Areni community.

It is also a mandatory condition of the program that the planned activities should be decided with the participation of all interested parties. Discussions were held with the residents, businessmen, grape growers, and winemakers in all nine settlements of Areni. Based on the results of each meeting, the municipality employees conducted discussions with UNDP and EU experts and, as a result of a long process of discussions and modifications, tourism was chosen as a priority direction for the community development, and 11 subprojects of the program were born.

 “This is a complex, complicated program, but an innovative one. For the first time such a program has been implemented in Armenia. All subprojects are interrelated, they derive from one another,” says Suzan Margaryan.

What does this mean? For example, Nare and her friends receive a grant and prepare the products, which they later sell at the “Tadi Shorva” festival organized in the Rind settlement of Areni within the framework of the same program. “Tadi Shorva” (in Vayots Dzor dialect, means “Soup made by grandmother”) is, in turn, a result of the “Cultural Gems” sub-program, and all these activities stem from the same concept of community development.

For several months, ethnographers traveled to the communities of Vayots Dzor and collected from the residents the cultural values ​​typical of the given region: songs, dances, games, and recipes, which were then combined in one database, a repository, which will soon be available in both print and online versions. The recipes included in the repository were then presented at the festival. The repository is also closely related to another sub-program – classes for chefs of local guest houses and gastroyards to learn these unique recipes and add them to their menus. And the municipality will help them with advertising as part of Areni branding, another sub-program underway. They found the implementing partner in Dilijan community, where the Portfolio Team went to exchange experience within the framework of the M4EG initiative.

New, attractive information signs have been installed in all the communities of Areni, with a QR information base on important tourist attraction stops. The number of these stops has also increased as part of the program. For example, the tourist trail built in Rind settlement takes hikers to the community’s rock-hewn church.

It takes skills to implement such a large-scale, multi-component program. The employees of the municipality, involved in the program, underwent special trainings, worked closely with international experts, the team went to Moldova to study the local best practices and then apply them in Areni.

The Areni Portfolio Team integrates the acquired knowledge and skills in their other daily operations, too. To institutionalize the experience gained, the Areni Portfolio Team has created an Areni Development Fund for further community development projects they will implement using the same human-centered, inclusive and innovative approach.

GYUMRI: CULTURAL TOURISM

While walking in the streets of Gyumri, a city with rich cultural traditions, close to the northwestern border of Armenia, you can just stop in front of the first building you come across and admire the black tuff it is made of, the gates decorated with unique iron patterns made by skilled blacksmiths of Gyumri. The Gallery of the Aslamazian Sisters is housed in such a building, one and a half centuries old, situated at the very beginning of a street opening from the central square. It is here that tourists going to Gyumri are first recommended to visit. What is attractive here is not only the rich collection of decorative and applied art of the talented sisters. Entering through the archway, you find yourself in the interior courtyard of the gallery, with a luxurious wooden balcony, which immediately transfers you to a creative environment with artistic spirit.

The re-equipment of this gallery was the first initiative the Portfolio Team of Gyumri agreed upon while working on the concept of cultural tourism development in the community.

“It has always been a gathering place for young creative minds. This is the reason why we decided to have a creative art laboratory with modern equipment in the attic of the gallery, which will serve not only the city’s masters and young people with creative minds but also the artists visiting Gyumri, who are looking for a platform to generate ideas. Masterclasses will also be held here,” says Lilit Tovmasyan, Head of Culture and Youth Affairs Department of Gyumri Municipality, Portfolio Team Coordinator.

In Gyumri, too, the program is designed in such a way as to ensure the active participation of the residents in the economic development of the community. For example, in the creative laboratory, young people will design benches, trash cans, traffic lights, which will then be produced and installed in the community. In this way, a local government-youth connection will be created, from which the city’s economy will benefit. This will also change the attitude of young people towards their community.

All subprojects of the program are complementary, continuing each other, designed to provide long-term results and add to the vision of a developed community. Digital and substantive research of tourist flows has been conducted, so that the community will have clear statistics on how many tourists have arrived, how many days they have stayed in the city, who are the tourists visiting Gyumri, etc. Having such data about tourists and their needs, will help them build a correct and effective tourism development strategy.

The other sub-programs were derived from the data of this research; equipping Mher Mkrchtyan Museum with digital technologies, creating content about Gyumri accessible in open online resources, establishing information points in the city, improving the public park, etc.

What did they learn as a result of the program? To listen to everyone’s opinions, not to be afraid to make mistakes, to change the point of view, and, if necessary, to change the plans, and always opt for innovations, says Lilit Tovmasyan.

According to her, the Portfolio Team has gone through a rather difficult path at all stages of this large-scale program with approaches completely new to them, from mastering the idea of ​​the Portfolio Approach governance to transforming and implementing their ideas according to that approach.

The young, energetic team of the Gyumri Municipality has done a great job. Meetings in different formats, discussions with all interested groups of the community, consultations with international experts, as a result of which the initial program was filtered and from many proposals several sub-programs remained, which were seen as the most effective for the concept of making cultural tourism in Gyumri more attractive.

Gyumri is already a cultural tourism destination, and the task was to increase this potential by presenting new, modern offers and improving the infrastructure. Those are initiatives that all should work together for the same goal: to bring more tourists to Gyumri, to keep them longer in Gyumri and to make them want to return later. New attractive tourist destinations will provide additional income for the residents.

KAPAN: DIVERSIFIED ECONOMY

Kapan, located on the southeastern border of Armenia, has a well-preserved gem – the Children’s Fine Arts School. Once you see it, you have the impression that you are in a tip-top cultural center of the capital with professional staff, necessary materials and equipment. Then you learn that until very recently the school did not even have a pottery machine, so the many samples of applied art decorating different corners of the school, the environment conducive to creativity, are all the result of great enthusiasm invested in the school over the years. The fifty-year-old school had been working with a small, old stove until recently.

“Before buying the pottery machine, we used to do everything by hand. I had seen on the Internet how the pottery machine works,” says 12-year-old Hripsime Harutyunyan, who, with the help of her teacher, learns to bend a clay pot for the first time on the machine.

Within the framework of the “New Talent” subproject of the Kapan community development program under the Portfolio Approach, in addition to a pottery machine, the school acquired a new, bigger and modern oven, a 3D printer, necessary literature, and the specialists from Yerevan held master classes for both the teachers and the students.

17-year-old Elen Ohanjanyan was one of the firsts to rush to the Children’s and Youth Creative Center to join the newly opened modeling hobby group. Elen has always dreamed of becoming a fashion designer, but there was no opportunity to master it in Kapan. The first and only hobby group was opened with the funds provided by the grant program. They bought professional equipment: sewing machines, irons, and materials. Equipment and materials were also purchased for the first woodworking hobby group in the city, and a new loom for the girls attending the carpet weaving classes. The old one is too big and not suitable for beginners.

Ellen is happy that she will not have to move to the capital in order to gain the necessary experience and knowledge before entering the Academy of Fine Arts. She wants to study and create in her hometown. Now, little by little, she is starting to turn what she learned into entrepreneurship. She makes small accessories and sells them online.

Among the subprojects of Kapan’s development program, those aimed at educating young people, acquiring new skills, and development of entrepreneurship abilities prevail. The newly established Kapan Youth Center, which aims to promote the activity of young people, also serves this purpose.

“When choosing the sub-programs, we took into account that the main branch of our community’s economy is mining. Metal price fluctuations in the international market can have an impact on the economy of the region, and for a sustainable economy it is vital to also develop other branches. That is why we emphasized the development of entrepreneurship, as well as the improvement of social services,” says Gor Tadevosyan, Deputy Head of the Kapan community.

For capacity building, community social services employees went to Saint-Etienne, France. Now they are digitizing the entire information base on the socially disadvantaged families of the community, in order to organize the support provided to them more systematically and efficiently, to respond to the problems in a more targeted manner.

Entrepreneurship courses for young people, advisory programs for small and medium-sized businesses so that they can manage their businesses in such a way that they start to grow, and an opportunity to join a large business network for larger entrepreneurs, as a result of which a branch of “Mantashyants” Business Club was established in Kapan, providing a good platform for local businessmen to establish new connections, find partners and expand their businesses.

The second tranche of the project will target innovative agriculture. This has become urgent in Kapan following the earlier escalation of the decades-long armed conflict in the region, as a result of which the community has become borderline and deprived of the opportunity to use many previously cultivated areas for agricultural purposes. They will try to fill that gap by changing the approach to agriculture: development of greenhouse farms, introducing innovations, smart livestock farms, etc.

The Portfolio Approach is a complex and participatory approach to governing, specifying problems and solving them, defining and implementing community development goals, as a result of which both the local population is given a chance to be heard and participate in building the vision of development of their community, and the municipal authorities are given innovative governing tools enabling them to lead and manage this entire development process effectively. A community-team idea from the human-centered practices of which will ultimately benefit the residents.

Narine Hovhannisyan\