2004-06-26
On Wednesday, June 16th, the Executive Director of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund, Mrs. Naira Melkoumian arrived in Los-Angeles on an official visit. At 7:30 pm on Friday, June 17th, a luxurious dinner-party was organized for Mrs. Melkoumian and the religious, political, charity, mass media and social persons. The meeting took place in La Ganiata villa of Mrs. Maria Mehranian, the Chairperson of the USA West Coast Local Committee of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund. Several significant benefactors and donors of the Fund were also present at the meeting, namely members of La Ganiata municipal council, the Consul General of the Republic of Armenia in Los Angeles with his wife, and others.

After his extremely warm welcome addressed to the present the former mayor of Glendale Mr. Larry Jaryan introduced Mrs. Maria Mehranian to the public and invited her for a speech. After an impressive greeting speech, with a great enthusiasm and ardor, characteristic to her, she introduced the problems of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund, the suggested solutions, the remaining needs of Armenia and Artsakh and the Funds obligation to meet all of those. Mrs. Maria Mehranian concluded her speech with a hearty appeal to the present for contributions at the coming Telethon on the Thanksgiving Day. Her speech was met with warm and long applauses.

Thereafter, Mrs. Naira Melkoumian took the floor. First of all, on behalf of the Armenian and Artsakh people and Governments, she expressed gratitude to the Armenians living in America, particularly to those from California. Most of the donations and contributions to the Fund arise from here. All the Armenians seem to have realized, that the best way to show their love for the motherland is to have participation in reconstruction of it. Its obvious, that the homeland will be built mainly by the hands of its sons and daughters, by their contributions and their efforts. Then Mrs. Melkoumian expressed hope that this year, like at the previous years our people, along with their hearts, would open their purses wide for the needs of our homeland, and that the Telethon scheduled in November, 2004 would be a great success. At the party Mrs. Melkoumian handed over a letter of acknowledgement to the chairman of the previous two year periods Tomik Aleksanyan.

After Mrs. Melkoumians speech Mr. Sargis Qotanjyan from the West coast committee of the Fund, made a slide presentation of a chosen group of nine projects that are available for sponsorship. Five out of the presented nine, totaling 100000 USD were adopted immediately.

Khachik Janoian

"Nor Or" newspaper

Los-Angeles

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