CELEBRATING WITH GHAPAN
By Jason Wells

Glendale News Press
October 22, 2008 10:28 PM PDT
CA

Members of the Khanamirian Dance School perform a traditional Armenian
dance at the 5th anniversary celebration of the Glendale-Ghapan Sister
City Association on Wednesday. (Roger Wilson/News-Press)

Event for sister city of 5 years features performance of Armenian
national anthem, dances.

More than 1,000 people at the Alex Theatre Wednesday celebrated the
fifth anniversary of Glendale’s sisterhood with the little south
Armenian mining town of Ghapan.

The City Council vote in 2002 to confirm Ghapan, also known as Kapan,
as Glendale’s fifth sister city was touted as a perfect match,
considering this city’s sizable Armenian population and that city’s
eagerness to form stronger ties with an established democracy.

Since then, city officials and organizers said Wednesday, the
relationship has proven fruitful in terms of material benefits to
Ghapan and in providing Glendale Armenians a formal conduit through
which they can help, learn about and stay connected to their heritage.

Similar assistance programs are set up for Glendale’s other sister
cities, which include Higashiosaka and Hiroshima, Japan, and
Tlaquepaque and Rosarito Beach, Mexico.

Organizers were careful to point out that Ghapan’s sisterhood wasn’t a
singularly Armenian one, but with the audience clapping and cheering
for 20 synchronized dancers from the Khanamirian Dance School, the
cultural ties could not be ignored.

When the Glendale High School choir sang the Armenian national anthem,
many in the audience could be heard humming along.

In this cross-national, municipal governmental relationship, "It’s
about that intangible sense of friendship," said Assemblyman Paul
Krekorian.

Ghapan — with a population of between 40,000 and 50,000, depending on
the source — lies about 137 miles southeast of the Armenian capital,
Yerevan.

In the five years since the cultural accord took effect, Ghapan has
benefited from a number of charitable projects undertaken by local
nonprofits and organizations.

The Glendale-Ghapan Sister City Assn. has raised hundreds of thousands
of dollars for public health and infrastructure improvements in a city
dependent largely on mining industries and still recuperating from
cross-border conflicts with Azerbaijan and slow population growth,
according to the United Nations and other government agencies.

Construction on a natural gas pipeline from Russia into Armenia is
expected to fuel fragile economic growth.

In the interim, donations of money and hardware have proven valuable
for the industrial city as it continues to develop, officials said.

Glendale Adventist Medical Center is helping to establish "health
posts" in the rural areas of the city, and is involved with a
cross-cultural medical training program for doctors there.

The Glendale Fire Department has donated fire hoses, ladders, uniforms
and an ambulance. Educational ties between the two cities were also
strengthened in 2006, when the Glendale Community College Board of
Trustees voted to declare the Ghapan State Engineering College a
sister institution.

That same year, Ghapan Mayor Armen Karapetyan visited Glendale for the
first time, three years after an 18-member local delegation traveled
to Armenia.

Numerous back-and-forth visits have occurred as Glendale
representatives attempt to keep up on the most pressing needs there.

The focus continues to be on Ghapan’s education and healthcare
infrastructure. Projects for the Glendale-Ghapan Sister City
Assn. include the renovation of a youth center and school classrooms.

There are also ongoing programs to sponsor students and preschool
programming.

"Of course you cannot do everything; it’s impossible," said Arpi
Andonian, who has served on the executive board of the Glendale-Ghapan
Sister City Assn. since its inception.

Still, she added, the medical, business, cultural and government
communities here have been instrumental in igniting real developmental
progress in an Armenian town that got a bad start under decades of
Soviet control.

"Without everyone’s help here, none of it would be possible,"
Andonian said.