One Village at a Time
Hrant Matevosian extolled the virtues of rural man. Hovannes Badalian sang about the people and their mountains. Martiros Sarian painted Armenia's villages.

Today, half of Armenia's poor live in these rural communities. The number of those who live away from cities represents one-third of Armenia's population. This segment has benefited only modestly from Armenia's overall economic growth.

The strategic objective of this program is to eradicate rural poverty in Armenia by offering technical and strategic support to Armenia's border villages, engaging the residents of the rural communities in determining their own development path, thus enabling their sustainability and viability, and strengthening Armenia's geostrategic and economic security.

The purpose is to improve a community's social and economic well-being, by upgrading infrastructure, offering technical assistance to agriculture-based activities, and identifying alternatives to agriculture. This program will depend on the successful interaction of a variety of entities and factors - the population of each rural community and their local institutions, the Government of Armenia, the various international aid agencies already providing invaluable assistance to Armenia's rural communities and marzes, and the financial support and know-how of the Armenian Diaspora. The projects in each village will be designed in partnership with the local community, existing institutions and local government.

As infrastructure and economic development get underway in the first phase of 50 communities, constant and consistent monitoring will make possible modification and adjustments. We will do what it takes to adjust the program to the needs of the people, the communities and the country.

It is not everyone who has the opportunity to build a country. Our opportunity is now. We can't put it off, and we can't squander it.

The Need

Low economic growth in rural Armenia is, according to international experts, a result of several factors: little or no non-agricultural sources of income, low productivity, distance from markets and an absence of sufficient and appropriate financial instruments.

Armenia's rural population does not always have experience with rural economies. Some are living in artificially-created rural communities created by the Soviet authorities simply to provide labor to propped-up factories nearby. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did these factories - supplies disappeared and markets vanished - and the residents of those communities remained without sources of income or the skills to create them.

Some other rural residents are refugees from Baku, or Northern Karabakh, even Javakhk, who found haven in rural areas, but had never before lived in a rural environment. They lack the experience and outlook of rural communities, and thus, also the skills to pull themselves out of poverty. The absence of non-agriculture based income sources acutely affects this population.

Those who do try to make a living in the agriculture sector need better information, improved access to quality materials, more transparent and accessible government and technical services.

The one common, connecting obstacle for all is that they suffer from deteriorated infrastructure. Inarguably, this is the most important factor hindering rural businesses. Poor roads, lack of water and telecommunications, as well as poor access to health care, education, gas and electricity are a major obstacle for quality of life and for economic development. Infrastructure is also the one aspect of a society's needs that individuals can't do for themselves. No amount of remittances from friends or family, no amount of will on the part of the individual will make it possible to do infrastructure piecemeal. It must be done by the government, and it is what a government owes its people, even the poorest and most destitute. They all have a right to water, to roads, to schools.

Thus, Rural Poverty Eradication will require community-driven economic development, coupled with building infrastructure while protecting the environment. In other words, the three pillars of this program are: engaging and involving the community; building infrastructure; and facilitating economic development.

Infrastructure and environment

One does not have to go far to see that Armenia's village infrastructure has largely deteriorated. Road travel is slow between and within villages. Sometimes, the road linking a community to the main highway, is also non-existent. In the winter, some roads are simply inaccessible - and this hugely affects access to markets, to health care and to schools. Water resources are unevenly managed. Soviet era irrigation systems, heavily electricity-dependent, are impossible to sustain, and are being converted, slowly, to pump-to-gravity systems. Drinking water is often hand-carried in buckets, because of the absence of a clean delivery network. The absence of electricity and gas presents a huge and on-going threat to Armenia's forests. Inadequate heating also represents a problem for educators and health-care professionals. Telephone communication - both land lines and cellular - are inconsistent and costly. Without television and internet coverage, it is difficult for rural communities to feel or be engaged in the social and political discourse and life of the Republic. Finally, dilapidated schools and non-functional health care points threaten the life of the population. The need for a community center or a culture hall is at the heart of each village's desire to live like a community, with access to a place for communal gatherings, celebrations and even for times of grief.

The lack of basic infrastructure reduces incomes, increases poverty and erodes a people's sense of community. It discourages businesses from expanding, and renders difficult, if not impossible, the process of attracting and keeping technical and other expertise.

It is for this reason that the focus of most international organizations operating in Armenia is on the rural areas. The Armenian Government, too, is allocating resources to the rural communities. This program will partner with all existing organizations, large and small, to supplement what is being done. Some are putting in irrigation lines, others are improving schools, some are providing health services, others are assisting with small and medium enterprise development. The Poverty Eradication Program will partner with them and collaborate so that investments can be used more strategically and outcomes become more successful.

This program will bring irrigation water, drinking water, paved roads, gas and electricity, access to health care, education, telephone, and television and internet services to each village, as needs and capacities are determined by specific village-focused research and assessment. The process of bringing these services to a community - issues of labor, timing and maintenance - will be explored together with the members of the community and the head of the community.

Here are some questions which will be asked: Should village roads be paved, even though farm equipment criss-crossing over them will mean quick deterioration and a need for constant up-keep? Who will pay for the upkeep? Is bringing gas lines to the village and to each home sufficient to keep the community from felling trees in a nearby forest and using free wood? Is it better to have water flowing at home, but attached to a water meter, rather than a (free) spring 200-300 meters away in the middle of the village?

Asking these questions and publicly, collectively, reaching answers which are environmentally and legally sound, and at the same time, within the capacity of the community to monitor and deliver, will be a mark of the project's sustainability in each community, and a pre-requisite for implementation. The right answers will inevitably result in the creation of a human network involving the community, the donors and the facilitators - leading to integrated and sustainable development.

Economic development

The Government's Poverty Reduction Strategy, developed together with the World Bank, IMF and a host of international and national experts, expects that poverty will be cut by half by 2015. It maintains that the growth of agricultural production will remain the main vehicle for rural poverty reduction.

At the same time, it states that in order to ensure stable agricultural growth and substantially reduce poverty and inequality, it is necessary to focus on steps which will

a. substantially increase productivity and farm incomes
b. establish and develop sales markets
c. develop financing and insurance institutions for agricultural production
d. provide for wider possibilities for non-farm activities

Through public-private partnership, this program will focus on the same steps, by proactively identifying the comparative and competitive advantages of each community, introducing technical advice, skills training and micro financing practices to spur small private enterprises and personal initiatives in the villages. The economic activities in the villages will be connected to their surrounding region and greater regional centers to promote their long-term sustainability.

At the same time, investors and donors will have the opportunity to study economic opportunities in those villages in order to promote viable partnerships in agriculture and agro-production, and particularly, the non-agriculture sector, including development of the services sector, as well as establishment of non-farm micro-enterprises in rural areas.

The non-agriculture areas which will be targeted are tourism, crafts production, IT, continuing education and jewelry.

In other words, the technical expertise that has been accumulated by international and government experts, and that exists in Yerevan, will be actively carried to the communities, one village at a time, in order to help them do what they want to do and what they can do - but more effectively, more productively, more profitably. The focus will be on knowledge transfer and institution building in order to ensure that the program's benefits outlast the program.