Agri Fest 2025 with the Tufenkian Foundation

After seven months in Armenia, Goris has become my favourite city. Nestled in the Valley of the Varrak River, its character precedes it. From the road above, its charming red tin roofs dot the green hillside, interrupted by the occasional tuff (pink) apartment block. From the street, you find yourself on one of two or three main roads that stripe the city, walking amongst old, vine-covered stone buildings, or in the leafy shade of the city’s trees.

In summer, doors and gates are left open. They offer the passerby tantalising glances into the lives behind each threshold, whilst the old stone gutters that line the streets accompany your walk with the murmur of running water.

At the bottom of the city, you’ll find Diktaket, the Goris viewing point. Here, the familiar falls away, revealing on the other hillside Old Goris, its ancient cave dwellings and churches squat below the staggering ‘rock forests’, huge pillars of stone that tower silently above the city.

Our stall was lined up on Diktaket with the rest of the participants of the Impact Hub Syunik’s ‘AgriFest 2025’. Designed to showcase Syunik and Artsakh’s rich cultural and agricultural production, AgriFest had turned Diktaket into a bustling array of colours and smells. From Studio Kerani, a small, Artsakhtsi-owned and operated ceramics business, to handmade candles and carpets, beehives, khozi khorovats (pork barbecue - Syunik is renowned for its excellent pork), and the usual array of village products, chir (dried fruits), preserves, pickles, teas, Diktaket was awash with products, producers, and craftspeople.

I was there in an official capacity. As part of my volunteering with Birthright, I have had the pleasure of working in Communications for the Tufenkian Foundation, an NGO that has operated in Armenia and Artsakh for the past 25 years. Despite its reputation and longevity, the Tufenkian team is small and punches well above its weight in terms of impact.

We were at AgriFest with villagers from our pilot Ե՛կ Սվարանց (Come to Svarants!) village revitalization project. Svarants is a small village, five minutes from the famous Datev monastery, and about an hour from Goris. Like many of Armenia’s rural villages, Svarants is shrinking. Due to a lack of adequate support, villages across Armenia are fighting to survive, with many villagers forced to find work elsewhere. Syunik is one of the worst-hit provinces. Some experts calculate that its population has shrunk by a quarter since the collapse of the USSR.

The Tufenkian Foundation is working to turn this around. The Svarants project is modest, but aspirational. It is building 20 new houses for forcibly displaced Artsakhtsis to help build up the local population, offering economic development support for agriculture and microbusinesses, and revitalizing community infrastructure. This is designed to supply the entire village with the resources, investment, and hope it desperately needs. And it's working. In the three short months I have been working with Tufenkian, the village has already seen families and individuals come home.

But Svarants is just a pilot project - the goal is to roll out similar revitalization schemes nationally. Rural areas are desperately important and overlooked. Food and border security are tightly linked to rural areas. Stronger rural communities mean a stronger, safer, and more prosperous Armenia for everyone.

Our stall consisted of half a table with fliers and leaflets about our various projects; the table and a half next to us was the villagers’, artfully heaped with wild flower teas and handmade tote bags. As the onsite Communications lead, it was my responsibility to ensure we had photos and videos of the event for our socials, and to communicate to festival attendees what the Tufenkian Foundation’s projects are. I spent the day camera and phone gimbal in hand, photographing, creating reel scenarios with the villagers, and drinking cup after cup of delicious teas - most of which I had never heard of before, much less tasted. I even ran into some other Birthright volunteers who had come down from Gyumri to check out the festival!

My background never really brought me in contact with rural areas, peoples, or the policies and issues around them. Born and raised in London, I studied literature, not politics or geography. My Armenian is second-rate at best (It was way worse before!). My volunteering with Birthright opened a world to me that I would never have discovered back home, and an avenue for advocacy that has become very close to my heart.

More than ever, I have understood that the best way to do something for Armenia is to be here, to live in this country, to work with and for its people, even if it's only for a short time. If you are considering Birthright, do it. You will not regret it.