COME HOME PROGRAM’S PARTICIPANTS NOT HAVING LEFT YET WISH TO RETURN TO HOMELAND, THEIR RESPONSES PROVE IT

Noyan Tapan
Aug 18, 2009

YEREVAN, AUGUST 18, NOYAN TAPAN. RA Ministry of Diaspora’s Come
Home program will work until 2009 November and over 500 Diasporan
Armenian young people will take part in program’s two-week stages. RA
Deputy Minister of Diaspora Stepan Petrosian informed journalists
on August 15 at the Artsakh Press Club. Summing up the end of the
Come Home program’s second stage, the Deputy Minister mentioned with
satisfaction that Diasporan Armenian young people leave the homeland
with bright impressions, see Armenia’s sights, visit museums and
picture galleries, participate in Armenian folk dances and native
studies courses, light candles in the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin
and as Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobian says, infected with the
virus "Armenia" they return to their countries with the wish to visit
the Homeland again.

According to the Deputy Minister, this program has a goal to
encourage repatriation, and the evaluations of program’s two stages’
participants has already made it clear that they are inspired with
program’s results, the evidence of which is also the letters of thanks
sent by many of them.

Answering a correspondent’s question of whether in 14 days Armenian
young people manage to get acquainted with real Armenia, Deputy
Minister Stepan Petrosian stressed that they live in families of
Yerevan residents, get acquainted with daily life of residents of
Armenia, walk by streets and naturally, see both the good and the
bad. And, according to them, the good predominated over the bad. "No
one presents a perfect Armenia to them, but instead we give them the
love and warmth they will find nowhere," the Deputy Minister said.

Program’s second stage will start on August 18. Over 60 Armenian young
people arriving from various countries will again take part in it.

At correspondents’ request Mr Petrosian also touched upon all
Armenian programs implemented by the Ministry of Diaspora, in
particular, mentioned the fact of creation of an association
and a cooperation network between Armenian architects living and
working in various countries as a result of the All Armenian Forum
of Architects, elaboration and implementation of joint projects,
including presentation of a joint architectural project to EXPO 2010,
competition of a project of a construction by modern architecture in
the territory of the Youth Palace, issue of retraining young Armenian
architects, placing two sculptures of renowned French Armenian sculptor
Torosi Rastekelenian in Yerevan.

And in response to the question of with what results the Ministry sums
up its first anniversary that will be marked on October 1, the Deputy
Minister said that in that connection Minister Hranush Hakobian has
planned a special press conference, during which the work done in the
past months will be summed up. A schedule of events has been already
worked out, a collection of Armenia-Diaspora official materials and
the Diaspora chronicle are being prepared for publication, which will
sum up Ministry’s one-year activity.