Today, Tsovinar Harutyunyan, Head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Armenia Office, managers of UNFPA programmes being implemented in Shirak region Narine Beglaryan and Eduard Israelyan, and Arthur Najaryan, the President of the Gyumri Youth Initiatives Center NGO, met with Shirak Governor Tigran Petrosyan. Tsovinar Harutyunyan presented in detail the programmes implemented by UNFPA Armenia in Shirak region.

In particular, she mentioned that celebration of the International Youth Day in in Gyumri in cooperation with the Youth Initiatives Center has already become a tradition. This year, too, although there were no mass events due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of interesting initiatives were launched in the Shirak region, including paid internship programme for young people, a video message contest for youth, as well as placing thematic billboards in central parts of Gyumri.

Tsovinar Harutyunyan also presented the two EU-funded programmes being Implemented by UNFPA Armenia in three regions of Armenia, including Shirak.

In the framework of the “EU for Gender Equality: Together against Gender Stereotypes and Gender-based Violence” programme, in cooperation with the Gyumri Youth Initiatives Center, a "Family Corner" will be established in Gyumri, where education meetings, trainings, awareness raising events for young men and women, fathers and mothers will be organized to promote equality between women and men, involvement of men in child care, changing stereotypes about the roles of women and men. Trainings for health care professionals on involvement of fathers in prenatal care will also be conducted.

The “Future today: Empowering women, youth and children for deepening democracy in Armenia" programme will enable women to plan initiatives that meet their needs, and the "Women for Women" support framework will be activated. The model of women's resource centers will be expanded, making them more inclusive.

The governor of Shirak welcomed the guests, then presented some observations on the presented programmes. "The programmes are complex in nature, the sets of problems are numerous, there is a need for public perception to recognize the violence and to analyze," he said. He assured that during the implementation of the programmes there will be cooperation with the relevant departments of the regional administration, and expressed readiness to support in any issue, taking into account the specifics of the region, including high rate of social vulnerability.

Tsovinar Harutyunyan thanked for the very important observations and noted that taking into account the mentioned peculiarities, UNFPA has expanded the cooperation framework within the programmes.

Thanks to Gyumri Youth Initiatives Centre for the photos.

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