Year in Review

IT and Business Resource Center

Here are some photos we took during the first couple of weeks for the new office we opened with the USAID grant the NGO was awarded.

Small Update

Again, I want to emphasize that when there are large gaps between posts, that usually translates into me having been a productive member of society. I wish that were the case. Rather, I have been traveling throughout the southern part of the country with graduate students in search of an organization who could benefit from an ecotourism business plan as part of their capstone project for school. However, before their arrival from the states, our NGO did manage to squeeze (understatement) in a grant from USAID for a Business and IT Resource Center for the town’s unemployed, and is now conducting workshops on a weekly basis. Shit, what else. Our NGO has been helping prepare the photo albums for students in schools here and in the surrounding villages by taking the NGOs camera and photo printer and telling them to say “cheese” in Armenian.  Speaking of villages, were still crossing our fingers that the grant gets fully funded for an IT camp for 40 youth in villages in southern Armenia. That could be a good, but very crazy, crazy time. Yes, I realize that in a couple weeks it will be a year in this country. Has it gone by fast? Yes … at times. Regrets, none. A lot of us are now preparing for the poor saps coming in to replace the group before ours. I am planning on visiting my first host family before they do arrive as to best prepare them for what is sure to be a helluva lot better volunteer than myself, as you can tell from what has just been written. Maybe next year I’ll actually have something potentially significant to report.