A Journey of Resilience
Women Empowerment
When we bought our house in Shushi in 2019, we thought we had made our dreams come true. Little did we know how fragile dreams could be. We could never have imagined that we would lose our home one day and that our hopes would crumble.
The war broke out in 2020, and constant bombing and massive killings dismantled our world. We fled to Armenia with my two children for several months while my husband, who served in the army, stayed in Artsakh. We returned to Stepanakert once hostilities temporarily ceased.
After returning, nothing was the same; it felt as though a black cloud filled with sorrow was about to rain. This fragile peace didn’t last, and in 2022, we found ourselves trapped in a total blockade imposed by Azerbaijan aimed at starving the entire surviving population of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).
One year later, in September 2023, there was a military incursion, followed by a ruthless war that forced the government to evacuate the entire population.
Exodus…
I remember how our grandparents told us horrific stories of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and the exodus; it felt the same, only the horses, after 100 years, were replaced by cars.
In Armenia, we settled in despite everything. We rented a small house in one of the villages of the Ararat region. Although the housing conditions were not what we had wished for, we did not lose hope of building a new life.
Then, one day, we learned about the Armenian Fund for Sustainable Development’s women’s empowerment program and applied for support. I sent all the necessary documentation, and they visited us.
About a month later, they invited us to Yerevan, and on Funding Commission Day, my husband and I were interviewed about the feasibility of our chicken breeding proposal.
Now, we have almost 400 chickens and one incubator, and we sell eggs and chicken meat. Additionally, the AF4SD also approved my request for professional hairdressing training.
Tatevik is a refugee from Artsakh with 2 children and a beneficiary of the AF4SD “Refugee Women Empowerment” program.
The Arev Society provides management support to the AF4SD “Refugee Women Economic Empowerment in Armenia” program.