“Youth in Armenia’s rural communities need more opportunities to develop their leadership skills and to play an active role in local development processes,” said Juliet Stein, EF’s acting country director in Armenia. EF has set out to create these opportunities and recently partnered with the Community Foundation of Northern Ireland (CFNI) to launch its Youth Bank program.
Participants in EF Armenia’s Youth Bank program, Credit: EF Armenia
As the first step, over 30 Armenian young people from rural communities gathered in Yerevan for a five-day workshop on grant making. Trainers from EF and CFNI taught them how to identify community needs, review project proposals and monitor and evaluate project implementation. Following the completion of the workshop, the trainees returned home to form Youth Bank committees and are currently conducting needs assessments of their communities. Throughout the 18-month program, EF staff will continue to mentor and coach the youth committees.
The Youth Bank program builds on the success of EF Azerbaijan’s Youth Fund program, which is now in its second operational phase. Launched at the end of 2006, the program enabled youth committees throughout Azerbaijan to complete 28 community projects, including producing public service announcements for local television, purchasing English language books for a local library, creating a newspaper for local youth and holding handicraft fairs to support local refugees. The program’s further success lies in the leadership and grant-making skills participants were able to develop.
According to Vernon Ringland, Youth Bank program coordinator for CFNI, these programs offer an “innovative approach to youth development that creates concrete opportunities for young people to solve local issues.”
