Illustrated Newsletter Brings Forests and Wildlife of Armenia to a Young Audience

ARMENIA TREE PROJECT
400 W Cummings Park, Suite 3900
Woburn, MA 01801
Tel: (617) 926-TREE 
Web: www.ArmeniaTree.org

PRESS RELEASE
February 5, 2019

Illustrated Newsletter Brings Forests and Wildlife of Armenia to a Young 
Audience 

By Jason Sohigian

WOBURN, MA--Armenia Tree Project (ATP) has released the eighth edition of its 
Building Bridges environmental education newsletter, focusing on the important 
theme of "Forest and Wildlife Preservation."

ATP's Building Bridges program connects diasporan students with their 
counterparts in Armenia and highlights Armenia's rich natural heritage through 
education. Over the past nine years, it has been supported by a grant from the 
Thomas Kooyumjian Family Foundation. 

Armenia has declared 2019 to be the "Year of the Caucasian Leopard," and this 
magnificent animal is featured in the newsletter with a camera trap photo 
captured by experts at WWF Armenia. The Caucasian Leopard is a subspecies 
listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. 
Recently, a leopard nicknamed "Leo/Neo" has found his way back home to 
Armenia's famed Khosrov Forest. 

"You can learn more about Leo/Neo, cool environmental facts presented in a 
format similar to National Geographic Kids, and much more in our newsletter," 
explains Sarah Hayes, one of the authors of the publication. The illustrations 
and characters have been developed by artist Alik Arzoumanian. The newsletter 
features stories with characters like Aram, Maral, and Tchalo, a gampr dog who 
has been teaching about fire prevention over the past year. 

The ATP newsletter also includes a feature called the coin box challenge. "The 
publication has a foldable donation box inside, which encourages young people 
to get involved and take action. We give them an option to collect small sums 
of money from their community which is used to support ATP's programs in 
Armenia," says Hayes. "This fosters a sense of paying it forward, which is 
important and gratifying at the same time."

"So, what is the coin box challenge? When students send their donation boxes in 
to ATP's headquarters in Woburn, our executive director Jeanmarie Papelian will 
send them a Building Bridges certificate. We also offer to feature the student 
on our website in recognition of his or her volunteer efforts," adds Hayes. 

ATP will highlight the student who raises the most money with a feature story 
in the next edition of the Building Bridges newsletter. The winner of the coin 
bank challenge will be announced in September. 

The illustrated Building Bridges newsletter is distributed free of charge to 
Armenian students across North America, in Armenia, and other countries where 
ATP has partner schools. It is available in PDF format on the ATP website, and 
hard copies are available for free by contacting ATP's Woburn office at 
[email protected] or (617) 926-TREE.