“By the time you are 25 years old, your nation will be transformed because of you.” This is the promise of Teach For Armenia, which has become an excellent opportunity for the youth to foster leadership, starting from a tiny classroom and becoming authoritative leaders in Armenia and Artsakh.
Teach For Armenia (TFA) is a non-profit organization that aims to provide wider educational opportunities for students in rural communities by training and recruiting passionate individuals to teach and lead community impact projects. Teach For Armenia’s Leadership Development Program(LDP) allows its Teacher-Leaders to contribute to the development of local communities by equipping the children with knowledge and skills to become future changemakers. The program gives the Teacher-Leaders new perspectives to enhance their teaching skills by working with kids in rural schools for two years, living in villages and contributing to community development.
As the program is gaining popularity among the Armenian youth, the students of AUA are also enthusiastic about their new chance to drive the change.
Anzhela Galstyan, 23, acquired her bachelor’s degree in Business back in 2020 and is now pursuing her master’s in Management at AUA. She currently occupies the position of Graduate recruitment manager in Teach For Armenia foundation. “The search for purpose led me into Teach For Armenia,” she says. It opened new doors for sharing her ambitions and passions to push the potentials of the coming generations.
Teach For Armenia endeavors to bring high-quality educators to the students and schools who need them and distribute equal opportunities across the nation, and Galstyan shares this vision. “The foundation and I both believe in the power of education, the importance of unlocking the full potential of all children through excellent education, and the great influence of it on the prosperity of our country and nation.”
Galstyan is currently managing the graduate recruitment team to raise awareness about TFA’s Leadership Development Program (LDP) among university students and organize educational events that come in handy for the community of students from all universities. Recently, the AUA Office of Student Affairs hosted an event where the students became acquainted with the 2-year LDP. As an AUA graduate, Galstyan assures that “AUA is an institution that creates a huge chunk of the decision-makers of tomorrow, and among its students, we have true born leaders, people capable of influencing their communities in unimaginable ways.”
Among the 75 Teacher-Leaders working in rural communities is Nina Shahverdyan, EC senior, who is based in a bordering village in Artsakh, Aghavno. Nina, 21, learned about the LDP from her friends. Despite her relatively young age, she is willing to invest all her vigor into the better future of Aghavno. “After the war, I realized that I didn’t do enough for my country,” confesses Nina. “I decided that the most worthwhile thing I could do was to educate children.” Nina discovered the gap between the education level in villages and cities is enormous and entering a classroom where the students do not know the letters was a big challenge for her. Now she organizes transformational lessons, mostly English classes, for future leaders and focuses on academic outcomes, which is also the requirement for the first year of LDP.
Creating an equal environment for children with different intellectual backgrounds is an important component of the work, and Nina tries hard to maintain equality in the classroom. “The students hold different intellectual levels, and some of them come from poor and uneducated families,” she adds.
The event organized for AUA students on November 15, marks the beginning of this collaboration, due to which more students are now familiar with the program and may desire to get involved. The Teaching English as Foreign Language master’s program at AUA, for instance, prepares teachers of English for schools and colleges. It is committed to the development of academic excellence and service to society. As a leading university, AUA provides its students with vast opportunities to build a career path in teaching.
