Housing program gives new home to family in rural Armenia

PanARMENIAN.Net - VivaCell-MTS and Fuller Center for Housing Armenia evaluate the current year's accomplishments. The housing program launched in spring is coming to an end. Partner organizations report that one of the most important accomplishments of the fiscal year is the transformation of the state of mind of beneficiary families of different regions of the country. Another accomplishment is that the 30-year-old problem was solved in Koti village.

“I have always viewed this program as one of the most successful. There are several reasons for that: we do an important job and help people solve the problems that have persisted for years with dignity. I am particularly happy for our compatriots living in borderland regions. The families we have supported will be celebrating the New Year in a new house. Let life bring them wonderful surprises from now on. I am grateful for cooperation,” VivaCell-MTS General Manager Ralph Yirikian said.

“In the current year, a particularly important accomplishment was the support to one of the families from Koti village. The family, having lived in the metal container for 30 years and having protected the children from the potential danger of the enemy’s shootings, will now live in their native village, in a safe, stone built house. Despair is no longer a state of mind for them; people start smiling and believe in the future. This was a long-expected gift for New Year’s Eve. First time in their life, the Bejanyans’ thirty-year-old sons consider starting families of their own,” said Fuller Center for Housing Armenia President Ashot Yeghiazaryan.

The Bejanyan family living in Koti village of Tavush region has lived in a metal container for three decades feeling the real danger coming from the shootings from the other side of the border. The family’s father, Babken, has spent most of his life inside the 27 sqm metal walls. His wife Nune, has overcome the difficulty of frosty winters, the summer heat, the horror of the enemy’s shootings, taking every survival as a miracle. Their daughter, Gohar, is the one who has survived by a miracle; the fragment of a shell found in the crib following the shelling and gunfire by the enemy could have irreversible consequences for the newborn. Gohar is a mother of a five-year-old boy.

Thanks to the housing program implemented by VivaCell-MTS and Fuller Center for Housing Armenia, the family’s life has totally changed; the Bejanyans are preparing for the New Year holidays in a stone-built, two-storey house.

“This is the happiest year of my life. I'm getting ready for the New Year. Having moved to a light and large house is so unusual that I am confused. My sons have their own bedroom, we have ours. Now the shelling does not seem as terrible as they used to be; the stone walls are stronger, and I have a full sense of safety. I have a big dream – I want my sons to get married in the new house,” said Nune Bejanyan.

After holidays, as part of the housing project implemented in the current year, another family will celebrate housewarming, this time in Aragatsotn region.