Five young people of Armenia were selected to spend two weeks of their summer vacation in the coastal city Khosta of Sochi under the sponsorship of Russia-based Armenian businessman Valery Muradyan.

Praising the “Ari Tun” Program of the RA Ministry of Diaspora aimed at helping young Diaspora Armenians become familiar with the homeland, Mr. Muradyan expressed the desire to invite youth of Armenia to Sochi for a reciprocal visit.

Among the selected youth were children or grandchildren having won in Olympiads, as well as the children and grandchildren of deceased freedom fighters.

Hayern Aysor’s correspondent sat down for an interview with participants of the “Ari Tun” Program, including Ashot Movsisyan, Serineh Nazaryan and Mushegh Matevosyan, who shared their impressions of the tour.

The youth were very excited and said they had spent unforgettable days in Khosta. They visited all the sites worth seeing, saw the deep gorges and high mountains of Khosta and had meetings with representatives of the Armenian community of Sochi. These gifted children had traveled to Sochi with the hope to have a chance to meet their compatriots and see how they live in Sochi and what problems they face.

“The Armenian community of Sochi is quite a large and well-organized community. The majority of the Armenians are Armenians from Hamshen. During our various meetings, we became familiar with the programs devoted to preservation of the Armenian identity and learned about the issues related to the teaching of Armenian and other related issues facing the seven local Armenian schools, and those issues require solutions,” Serineh said.

The youth and the members of the community agreed to help strengthen cooperation between the Armenian schools of Sochi through the RA Ministry of Diaspora, providing the opportunity to solve the above mentioned issues. The youth also discussed this issue with Roza Kochkanyan, who is a superintendent for education in Sochi and an Armenian language methodologist for several schools.

The only thing the youth regret is not being able to establish close ties with their peers since almost all of their peers were spending their summer vacation in different cities.

The youth praised and admired Valery Muradyan. “Mr. Muradyan organized everything at a high level, treated us like his children and accompanied us wherever we went. We never felt like strangers. Every evening, we would drink tea and talk about our future plans. When the time had come for us to bid each other farewell, we were very emotional because we had become very attached to each other,” the youth said, adding that they had promised to maintain the friendly relations that they had established.

Seeing their compatriots living in a foreign country, the youth became more patriotic, understood the real role and value of the Homeland and realized that they need to help all Armenians around the world at any moment.

Gevorg Chichyan