Unified Young Armenians: Creating Change in the Community through Armenian Classes for Youth

Vahagn Karapetyan

kingvahagn@ucla.edu

It is very rare to find a group of individuals who give back to their community without even a hint of personal gain for themselves. Unified Young Armenians (UYA) is just such a group. The talented and dedicated youth in UYA seek to enrich the Armenian community in any way possible. The non-profit group is divided into numerous committees ranging from education to public relations. However, the goals of all of these committees are consistent: to encourage cooperation within the Armenian community, promote Armenian culture, and to get the Armenian youth involved in creating change.

One of the ways that UYA seeks to promote Armenian culture is by sponsoring free Armenian language and history classes that are held at the Montrose Public Library every Saturday from 12 to 3 pm. The classes are completely free and paid for by UYA members themselves. They are open to anyone (even non-Armenians) above the age of six. When asked about how the idea for these classes came to fruition, Anna Najarian, a UYA volunteer teacher for the classes, shared her personal experiences to help describe why the program started in the first place. As a young child, Anna did not have the opportunity to attend Armenian school and learn about her culture, and when she got older, she already had too many other responsibilities and simply did not have the time anymore. She believes that she missed out on a valuable learning experience. As a result, these classes were created by the UYA to give Armenian youth the opportunity to learn about their culture and their language, and to not miss out like Anna did. Furthermore, Armenian children are given the opportunity to meet other children and forge lasting friendships with individuals who they might have never met if it were not for these classes.

The classes started with only seven to eight students. However, due to its popularity, that number soon rose to 40 to 42 students. In fact, children are sometimes turned down for the program due to the lack of physical space. The classes have been in session since September of 2007 and are run by volunteers such as Hasmik Khachatryan and Anna Najarian.
Hasmik, who has been teaching Armenian for 16 years, devotes her time every Saturday to teach children of various ages numerous topics ranging from Armenian poetry, architecture, history, and holidays. According to Hasmik, the curriculum focuses on a "hands on" approach that gets the children involved in any way possible. For instance, for one of the assignments, the students had to help their parents prepare Armenian food and then bring it to class for a potluck-like event. Hasmik recalls how "the children greatly enjoyed this project and at the same time, they had the opportunity to learn about Armenian culture."

Another activity that the students were asked to do was to get several pictures of locations in Armenia and then present them in front of the class. If they could not find actual pictures, they had the option of drawing them. Anna described the assignment further by saying that "research had to be done on the chosen locations and the children had a great opportunity to learn about Armenian architecture and history because many of the pictures included famous buildings and churches." The students were thoroughly immersed and very enthusiastic about this particular assignment as well.

These are the kinds of projects that Hasmik and Anna consistently assign for the children. However, Hasmik noted that "the emphasis is not simply on Armenian culture, history, and language; we take a universal approach to learning. The focus is on the importance of knowledge and encouraging intellectual curiosity. For instance, when discussing holidays, we also talk about the American counterparts to help the children gain a wider perspective. We must realize that we live in a multi-cultural society and to understand the culture of others, we must first understand our own."

As a result of such innovative teaching methods, the students love the classes and are rarely absent. In fact, the children do not even want to leave the class at 3 pm; they want to stay the entire day. However, for those students who do end up being absent several times, UYA members go out of their way to follow up on them and see what the problem is. They even go as far as to provide transportation for children and to set up carpools for others. This is the kind of ceaseless dedication by UYA members that keeps these classes going.

The students are not the only ones that greatly appreciate the efforts of the UYA. The parents are extremely grateful as well because the classes give their children an opportunity to be productive and to learn the Armenian language. Hasmik mentioned "how extremely proud some of the parents were when they noticed their children speaking more Armenian than English at home."

The situation for the UYA is not all positive however. There is a constant need for sponsors since everything is currently funded by limited UYA funds. There is a dire need for donations and fund raisers are constantly held to keep programs such as the Montrose Library classes afloat. Furthermore, the physical space provided by the library is limited and not permanent. According to Anna, "for the classes to stay for many years to come there needs to be a much more stable location for us to use. We also can’t recruit more students because there simply is no space for them."

There is also a constant need for classroom supplies. UYA volunteers such as Anna have pulled together funds to create curriculum booklets and are consistently restocking supplies whenever needed, but there is a clear need for permanent sponsors in addition to the UYA funds. Whatever the future may hold, one thing is certain: with the help of dedicated individuals from the UYA, the classes at Montrose Library will continue for as long as realistically possible.