Homenetmen Anniversary: 90 Years in the Making (Summer 08)

Niyiri Manougian
niyirianaghchig@netscape.net

Homenetmen: a name that is known and exalted throughout the world. It represents 90 years of athletics and scouting. It is for some people the emblem of the Armenian community, which unites the Armenian people, especially the Armenian youth, from all the corners of the earth.
Founded officially in 1918, Homenetmen has served as a gathering place for the youth of the community. It provides them with a chance to express themselves through sports or scouting, while it simultaneously imparts cultural and historical knowledge.

"Dating back to 1910, Armenians living in Constantinople participated and prospered in various athletic groups," says Homenetmen.org, the official website for Homenetmen. "One of the coaches of these groups, Shavarsh Krissian, with the help of his periodical Manramarz publicized the need to unite all Armenians under one organization."

Krissian had gone to Europe. There he had seen the scouting movement that had been established in 1907 by the British Lord Baden Powell. Krissian liked the scouting organization’s disciplinary standards, physical education, and moral understanding. He intended to incorporate scouting into his new vision for uniting all the athletic teams, as is evidenced in the section entitled "Homenetmen Scouting History" in the book Norakir.

Krissian was successful in organizing four Armenian Olympic Games for the various athletic teams from the first Olympic Games which occurred on May 1, 1911 to the fourth Olympic Games in August of 1914, that were cut short due to World War I (Homenetmen.org).

Krissian still wanted to unite all these athletic teams under a single umbrella, but the "unification plans were halted as in 1914 World War I began. Soon after in 1915 the Armenian Genocide tragically took the life of Shavarsh Krissian as he along with other Armenian intellectuals and leaders was killed at the Ayachi prison in Bosporus," says Homenetmen.org.

As the war ended, the unrealized dream of Krissian to unite all the Armenian athletic groups was revitalized when seven Armenians met in Constantinople for a meeting in November 1918, says Homenetmen.org. There "Homenetmen"—which sounds out the acronym in Armenian for the letters H.M.E.M. which stand for Armenian General Athletic Union, and encompasses the scouting division as well—was founded.

"The first Homenetmen Executive Committee was formed on December 16 of 1918. After its establishment in 1918, four Homenetmen chapters were soon opened in various Constantinople neighborhoods," says Homenetmen.org.

Krissian’s vision was realized, and the Armenian Olympic Games he had organized made a comeback on August 31, 1919 as stated in Homenetmen.org. After that only two more Armenian Olympic Games were held, the last being on November 2, 1921.

"On July 20, 1920 the founding members of Homenetmen were officially invited to the independent Republic of Armenia" states Homenetmen.org. "The purpose of the meeting was to share both their knowledge and expertise regarding athleticism and scouting with the Republic’s government...Although initially successful in their efforts to spread Homenetmen’s athletic and scouting movement within Armenia, Homenetmen later was banned from Armenia after Armenia’s succession into the Soviet Socialist Republic" in 1920.

In 1922, Constantinople followed the Soviet Union and forced Homenetmen to close all its chapters in the area. But Homenetmen.org says that the leaders who had dispersed didn’t give up on their vision. They established a chapter in Beirut, Lebanon—which is the seat of Homenetmen’s Central Committee to this day—in 1924, and one in Aleppo, Syria the following year.

Since then Homenetmen Chapters have been established worldwide, including many in the USA. In 1921 New York became the first city in the USA to have a Homenetmen chapter, says Homenetmen.org. The organization flourished until "due to the effects of World War II upon the world’s economic and political atmosphere, Homenetmen chapters previously established in Western Europe and the Americas became weak and somewhat inactive. Moreover, due to the Communist takeover in Eastern Europe, 19 chapters in both Romania and Bulgaria closed their doors."

Homenetmen continued to grow from the 40’s till the 60’s, when "due to political situation in the Middle East, a large number of Armenians migrated to Australia, Canada, and the United States. Not only did they reestablish their lives and their families, but they also began the expansion of Homenetmen chapters to new areas" (Homenetmen.org).

Today, Homenetmen boasts of 98 chapters throughout the world.

Homenetmen scouting, of course, has different meanings for different members. For a select group it signifies the core of boy and girl scouting as Lord Baden Powell saw it: discipline, camping, and wilderness survival. For other members in a comparatively broader context, scouts is a means of preserving the Armenian culture and heritage and uniting the new generation through scouting activities. For the rest, the majority who join Homenetmen scouts, scouting is simply a chance to be with like-minded individuals who can have fun and participate in activities with their friends and mentors, whether it is at camp or regular weekly meetings, playing games or singing around the campfire.

It has been 90 years since Homenetmen was established in 1918. The Armenian community had then just come out of the genocide, and the main effort behind the scouting movement was to gather the orphans and give them a sense of family, according to Norakir. The scouts also collected donations for impoverished families during the aftermath of the Genocide. Scout leaders were sent to orphanages and scouting replaced the family unit. To this day, scouts address each other, especially their leaders, as kouyr (sister) or yeghpayr (brother).

During these 90 years, Homenetmen has faced many challenges but it still flourishes. One of the highlights is the Jamboree Camp held every four years that unites scouts from all over the world. The first of these was in 1978, held in Greece. "There were scouts from all over the world. Each country that was present had its flag up. It was an international gathering, but all that were present were Armenian" said Jenik Galoustian, who went to the Jamboree when she was 17 years old as part of the group from Kuwait.

The second Jamboree was held in France in 1980. "We went sightseeing a lot. They showed us the sights and museums of France. I remember making a table for our tent. We took a piece of log, cut it up into slices, and then placed a long nail into it. The separate pieces of the log would swivel out, like a fan, and we would have a nice table to eat at, and then when we didn’t use it, we would push the different layers in, and it would be nice and compact. Some of the leaders liked it so much that they would come and sit by us" said George Manougian also a member of Kuwait’s Homenetmen chapter.

After Armenia’s independence from the Soviet Union, the Scouting Jamborees were held in Armenia every four years, allowing Armenian youth from all over the world a chance to see their motherland. This was impossible before, as the Soviet Union did not give out visiting visas. All they had learned in books about Armenia came to life.

The scouting activities today consist of weekly meetings, camping trips where the scouts’ knowledge is tested, as well as games and activities between the various chapters. This year, Homenetmen Western Region USA bought a new campground in Frazier Park, Southern California. Homenetmen will be holding its Fifth Regional Camp in the summer of 2008 in the newly acquired campground, with over 400 scouts and 300 cub and brownie scouts participating. This year’s camp will also mark the 101st anniversary of the establishment of scouting by Lord Baden Powell.

Scouting has come a long way since Lord Bayden Powel’s initial motive for starting scouts over a century ago: to prepare young boys for the army. Homenetmen Scouts has never been discriminatory because of gender. Its main goal in the Diaspora for the last 90 years has been to make Armenian youth aware of their culture through various sports or scouting activities.