Brand new start

Hello everyone!

While in the USA I had many opportunities to experience the way Americans serve their communities. I made a list of the differences between Armenian and American ways of service, and planned to share my experience in my Armenian home. In America I was part of the GNML (Global New Media Lab) program and Youth TechCamp in Vermont, and decided to organize a campaign called "Step up-clean up!" Now I am proud to say that I have been awarded a GYSD (Global Youth Service Day) grant to pursue this project here in Tatev, Armenia! The FLEX program has inspired me to be a force for change in my community. It is important for me to use every chance I possibly can to encourage a positive change.

So here we are!! With the help of GYSD grants program I am finally organizing my campaign!

On the 15th of April I am organizing a seminar with the youth of Tatev village. We will talk about Leadership, play games with the children so they may put their knowledge to practice, and we will talk about the importance of career development.

It's important to STEP UP for change with knowledge and will! This is our main goal!

On the 17th of April Peace corps volunteers, Ryan Trygg from Tatev and Sarah Moenter from Khndzoresk, will hold a seminar about volunteerism and will share their advice and experiences with the children. After the seminar we will clean up dirty areas of the village and will handout brochures to promote clean environment!

If you are interested in joining in our project feel free to contact us!

Happy GYSD week from Armenia! <3

GNML-just an abbreviation or ...?

Do y'all know the feeling when you're so excited about doing something that you don't even realize how the time passes by? That's me now.
I can't believe that this whole sessions , busy weeks , deadlines are over now.
So , let me tell you about my GNML life.

I became a BLOGGER.
When I say blogger I literally mean a Blogger. I never really liked Blogger and I opened my personal blog in Wordpress but I was not able to do it for this one so I had to try. It was not that weird and actually I learned a lot of details.Besides that I always wanted to be a blogger who works for the community.In Armenia we use blogs(in general) a lot because sometimes when you don't have a right to talk, you can always write what you want to say.I think when I'll go back to Armenia I'll try to help my friends to use their blogs as a social change resource.

Twitter is not that much popular in Armenia, it's kind of new thing so there are not many people who use it but it still helps a lot. Armenians who are all around the world use twitter as a source for communication and we use it to spread news more quickly. In Armenia teenagers mostly use twitter to "talk" with their favorite artists and I would never imagine using it for a social campaign.

YouTube is really popular in Armenia.Sometimes people videotape everything they see and upload it to YouTube and they share it with their friends and they send it to TV channels  and you can see it on TV the next day!!I had fun making the Elevator Pitch video, editing it , talking to camera and trying to explain your whole point in 60 seconds.

Facebook rules Armenia! It's the most popular social network in the whole country. We had a lot of campaigns that archived their goals by just using Facebook. I used to administrate some social campaign pages so this session was fun for me!

Instagram is not that popular in Armenia and I would never imagine me uploading a picture on Instagram about cleaning the environment instead of  a selfie with a best friend.I don't think it's the best way to archive my goals in Armenia but it can be helpful later because Instagram is just starting to be popular.

LinkedIn was the hardest session for me! It was a new thing for me and it took me a while to adjust it but I understood the mechanism and i actually found out that a lot of people that I know who are succesful and they do some things to make our lives in Armenia easier have LinkedIn.

This whole 10 Sessions were the most enjoyable homework I've ever had. It made me think about the little details of the big problems that my country had. It introduced me the real picture of the world and I got to know about a lot of problems that my friends have in their countries. It was a great experience! I started to use social media for what it's supposed to be used. I knew that Social Media has a big power on people's life but this Sessions taught me how to be the part of it.

For me the most challenging experience was LinkedIn session because I've never used it before . I felt like it's too formal and organized for me.I felt like I already have a company that does a lot of campaigns in Armenia and I had to introduce me, so it was really really challenging.

In the future I plan to... Okay , let's start from here.I'm not planning to do something with those social networks or the knowledge I got from these sessions,I'm already doing it. I really want to change a lot of things in Armenia and I already started ...

Thank you GNML! Even though sometimes I was too tired of the Google Alert emails, even though I was stressing about the deadlines and even though sometimes I was lost trying to embed my accounts to my blog I ENJOYED THIS MONTHS with y'all and I'm pretty sure that GNML team will not let us "to rest" in our countries either ... So ,I'm ready to be the change I want to see !
GO GO GO GNML!!!

The Deadly thruth about trash

Have you ever thought what can trash do to the animals?

I never really thought about that. I mean , I know what affect can it have to their organism and all that but there's also the other part . 

In America I've never seen cats or dogs eating food/trash from the trashcan but in Armenia you can see it all the time. First thing to ask is why are those animals walking around the streets ? Yes, that's a big issue too but let's think about the trashcan "food" for a minute.I found a really great article about how does the trash affect the animals and technically what can happen to them because of that.

Knowing the potential impact of trash on wildlife can save an animal's life.  Did you know that ...

I would never leave if I would have a nice place to live

Sovetashen means "The town of Soviet" . You might think this has nothing to do with my campaign but it might have ... Sovetashen is a place where people throw trash , literally everything . I've been there 2 times , I was crossing that area and I could not breathe at all. I made my dad drive faster because the smell was horrible even with the closed windows.
There are some apartments in that area , people actually live there.
When people buy apartments they look at the neighborhood , the street nosiness , what kind of view can they have out of their window and stuff like that.For those people , normal life is not normal any more because they already adjusted to living in bad consequences.
I found a really old but still new article using Google Alerts for my campaign.
Since 2007 there have been people who had allergic diseases because of the area they lived in. You can see more details here .
I hope you and I can change the future of the kids that live in that area,dreaming of the view of a beautiful park and a playing area.

Follow me and let's make the change we want to see :)

Elevator Pitch

Have you watched my "Elevator Pitch" video yet? No? My bad , I forgot to post it here but I think  it's not a big issue.  Here's the link for the video => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Ou4092_O4

Garbage as a source for energy

Sweden is the 10th most clean country in the world but today I don't want to talk about how do they keep their country clean. Everyone in this world makes trash , uses garbage etc ,so logically it's not really possible to have everything clean, so how can we do it?This is what they did in Sweden.They take the garbage (and it's not only from Sweden it's also from other European countries) ,and they "make"energy from it.Newspapers are turned into paper mass, bottles are reused or melted into new items, plastic containers become plastic raw material; food is composted and becomes soil or bio gas through a complex chemical process. Rubbish trucks are often run on recycled electricity or bio gas. Wasted water is purified to the extent of being potable. Special rubbish trucks go around cities and pick up electronics and hazardous waste such as chemicals. Pharmacists accept leftover medicine. Swedes take their larger waste, such as a used TV or broken furniture, to recycling centers on the outskirts of the cities.Some Swedish companies have voluntarily joined in the struggle. For example, H&M has begun accepting used clothing from customers in exchange for rebate coupons in an initiative called Garment Collecting.

We are doing one more step- UP !

Are you reading this again ? Yaaay ! I hope you are ready to wake up and make a step up with me to make a big change with little steps .So my next step to my "Change Revolution" is this . 
Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.Let's make that ordinary instant together.