Last week social investor, co-founder of IDeA Foundation Ruben Vardanyan met with participants of Neruzh (“Potential”) program at UWC Dilijan College. One of them asked Vardanyan to elaborate on his recent remark that “we all should help assist Nikol Pashinyan, because his failure would be a catastrophe for the Armenian nation”. We present the response from Ruben Vardanyan.
The planning horizon
All of our projects have a planning horizon of 20-25 years. With all my respect to the people who run this country today, our vision spans a longer period of time.
I myself and other diasporan Armenians who implement projects in Armenia are perceived as foreigners. We aren’t local and we respect the government and its leaders elected or appointed by the citizens, and we want to cooperate with the state. It will be unethical to implement development projects in a country if they are not legitimized.
Together with Noubar [Afeyan] and many other partners we are implementing ‘anchor’ projects in Armenia for almost 20 years. In 2008, we had an open conversation with the previous Armenian leader Serzh Sargsyan. We said that we were going to keep doing those projects anyway; the people but not the state would be the beneficiaries of all our initiatives and our planning horizon would include at least our children and grandchildren, who were just starting their life’s journey.
You know, diasporan Armenians who come to Armenia to implement projects here usually expect a kind of recognition, but we don’t. So we said to Mr. Sargsyan, if he wanted to help us, we’d be grateful; if he’d remain neutral towards our activity, that would be his decision; and even if he turned negative, that would be fine, that would be his decision anyway.
The tax audit
For your information, recently tax officers inspected our charitable work for the last 11 years. I’m not sure if this was legal, anyway this was done and we were happy to show all our records for the UWC college in Dilijan, for the Tatev program and for all the projects which our foundation implements in Armenia. But it’s important to realize that this was my personal initiative and I really don’t think it’s a positive sign for any charitable activity in the country.
On Karen Karapetyan, evolution and revolution
As you may recall, in 2016, I openly shared my opinion with the public about the appointment of Karen Karapetyan as Prime Minister. In one of my interviews I said that there was no alternative to the support for the Prime Minister and his team; we wouldn’t get a second chance.
Karen Karapetyan is my friend, but my personal attitude doesn’t play any role when it comes to what is right for Armenia. He was appointed after the April War and he was expected to change the situation in a gradual, evolutionary way. The mechanisms that usually transform a society as it evolves are well-known. They are: revolution, which is a radical, fundamental transformation of society; repression, which relies on violence against sections of society and total intimidation; reform, which causes changes to the norms of society that do not affect the basis of the social order; and evolution, which entails a gradual change in the composition and state of a society and may either be beneficial or lead to a crisis. To me, evolution is the best way of transformation, but there was no hope that Armenia still had a meaningful amount of time for a gradual change. And so it was – revolution happened.
Real support of real people
I’m happy that the revolution in Armenia was an example of positive peaceful protest and now the country has a leader who received 70% of votes and is supported by the majority of population in Armenia, which is very important. And what is crucial, these are real people who support him. But this support comes together with great expectations and a hope that the change will really happen. If young people who trust in their leader and the transformation are disappointed, it will be horrible for Armenia.
I believe that if we want Armenia to prosper, we need to help Prime Minister Pashinyan and the government. It is very important to make a real change and not a quick cosmetic fix.
So, when people ask me if I’m with Pashinyan or against Pashinyan, my answer is that the question itself is wrong. He is a legitimately elected Prime Minister who leads the country.
The economic model
Can the current economic model of Armenia be successful? This is a very good question and I hope debates on this will happen, not only in the government but also in the private sector. If the latter is invited by the authorities for an open dialogue, we will be happy; if not, it’s fine too. What we can do is continue to do what we can despite the restrictions and limitations which exist, with respect to the country that hosted us and allowed us to turn our bold ideas into reality.
The importance and impact of the projects
The importance of our projects is not always obvious, nor is the impact they have on people’s lives. For example, we hear people complain about the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative: “Why do you give money to South Africa, Burundi or South Sudan? We are much poorer, why don’t you give money to us?” Again, we understand these complaints but in our view, it is important to do both. There are no scales by which it is possible to weigh the significance of modernizing one’s own country against reviving the moral and intellectual core of the nation.
The same goes for the college in Dilijan. Sometimes we face the criticism, people say: “Why do you spend so much money on one school? Why not to donate this sum of money to renovate 150 existing schools?” It is a very fair point to talk about, because schools need to be renovated in Armenia and all schools, not just one, need to be great. We realize the importance of such aid, but we want to embark on more profound, systemic changes. Our decision to open an international school in Dilijan for children from a variety of countries with differing ethnic origins matched our vision of Armenia’s future as a hub country that would serve the region and the world. Today, over 200 children from over 80 countries are studying at UWC Dilijan. Prior to arriving in Dilijan, most were not aware of the existence of Armenia. Maybe we are wrong, but I hope we are right though; I trust a school in Armenia which met high international standards will bring changes for the entire education system in the country.
By implementing the initiatives as UWC Dilijan or Aurora, we are trying to integrate diversity. We all are different; we don’t always agree with each other, we often have different views on serious matters like Armenian Genocide or Ukraine-Russia-Georgia relationship or Korean-Japanese conflict. It’s not easy to talk to someone you disagree with, but we try to say that we need to respect each other and we try to foster the culture of integration. This is hard to implement, but if we all succeed in this, we will prosper.
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