Armenia Trip 2006In 2006 a group of us from the Church went to help refurbish a Childrens camp in Armenia in partnership with the charity "Samaritans Purse".
We’d been trying to organise such a trip for about 2 years at the request of our Youth group. We found that the Charity Organisation called Samaritan’s Purse (Christmas Shoebox Appeal fame) was involved in working with community’s and Children in third world countries. They informed us of the work that they were trying to support in and gave us some background information on what help was needed there. In February 2006 the planning began to organise for a 2 week work trip in September. Each person going on the trip got involved in fundraising to generate money cover the cost of tools, materials and children’s clothes, sweets, colouring books, pens, crayons and other bits and pieces for children. We flew out of
The camp in Sevan is leased by a local Church located in the Capital city for the purpose of bringing groups of children from two Refugee camps for a week or two week break away from the slums that they live in... The camp consists of nine houses like the one above; these houses are converted metal containers in desperate need of repair. Our task was to completely re-wire all the electrics to make them safe. The cables were all just tacked to the walls and ceilings with asbestos backing corded strips, we took out all of the old cabling and ran the new cabling hidden behind ceilings and walls, proper circuit breakers, light fittings installed. Don’t panic, we had a qualified electrician on the team, and a carpenter, and builder. The carpenter came into the house after the electrics and built very simple open wardrobe with a clothes rails and few shelves, meanwhile the rest of the team was outside fixing up the gables and painting the outsides.
The local church in Armenia has a team of people who work with the families in each of the locations trying to help the people fill in forms, get work, educate the parents on the benefits of school for the children, and distributing food and clothing. We had the privilege of being able to bring €500 worth of children’s clothes and other donated items.
We visited both camps spoke to different people that live in them, some stark stories of families fleeing from genocide, others from the 1998 Earthquake who still are waiting to be housed, and because many have had to flee with virtually only the clothes on their back have no documents, passports or belongings. The people in these places have a winter without heat to look forward to, in dark, rundown, draughty buildings.
What are our thoughts now that we are back, we had a couple of debriefing sessions just so each of us can come to terms again with the affluence that surrounds us compared to the poverty we lived among for two weeks, the one thing that has struck me in the midst of all we seen and heard is this, That even though the people had so little of the material things we enjoy, there is a joy and generosity in their lives that is amazing and challenging. Would we go to help again? unanimously we all said yes. There are many stories that can be told unfortunately space and time does not allow to tell them all.
|
|
To the left
 Printable Version |