Posted on April, 26 2016

The first stage of the Financial Participatory Approach (FPA) for Socio-Economic Development project was finalized in Urtsadzor community’s cultural center this Friday. 130 participants from 5 communities of Vedi subregion (Urtsadzor, Shaghap, Lanjanist, Lusashogh and Zangakatun) had chance to participate in different creative contests to win prizes and money. Schoolchildren participated in drawing and handicraft contests, while adults participated in short essay contest. The topic of contests covered a very important issue of nowadays: “Humans and Nature: The Right Relationship”. 40 people of different ages won different prizes by presenting the main problematic aspects of this relationship.

The event by itself was very colorful organised with great enthusiasm. It began with the greatest Armenian writer H. Tumanyan's tale "Tailess Fox". But the actions were taking place in the present, thanks to which the performance touched very important issue of nowdays -  nature pollution. After the presentation, the award ceremony was held at the hall where every single winner was warmly welcomed. 

This was only the first part of a big project, which is being implemented in Vayots Dzor region, and consists of 3 main phases: “Individual-Family-Community”. First phase is based on an individual participation; second phase is based on a family participation, and third phase will be based on community participation.  During the family participation phase, which will take place in May, each family of the communities will have chance to present their business proposals to the juries committee. During the development of their proposals they will receive financial support from the organizers in order to present the proposals in a proper and attractive way. The project should present a supplemental source of income for the family and be realistic in implementation process. Each community will have a winner family which will receive initial financial support to start the project.

Finally, the last phase of the project will be submitted by the community, and here we will have only one winner which will receive financial support to implement the project for the community prosperity. And the topic for this phase is: “Our community: yesterday, today and tomorrow…”  They are free to choose the way of presentation. 

This project is a wonderful tool to support socio-economic development of the communities whose livelihood very much depend on natural resources, and who are living across nature protected areas and surrounding lands. FPA is using financial resources for mobilizing local population; the concept is based on participatory approaches and gives opportunity to people to take charge on their own development. This approach creates win-win solution to both nature protection and socio-economic development objectives.

The project is being implemented in the framework of Eco-Corridors in the Southern Caucasus programme, which is financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development through KFW Entwicklungsbank.