A working visit to Dilijan community of Tavush marz for the purpose of developing the full package of “Strengthening land-based adaptation capacity in communities adjacent to protected areas in Armenia” grant project was paid by the director of “EPIU” SI M. Galstyan, deputy director S. Baloyan and head of Ecological education project division R. Shahazizyan on July 20, 2018.
The purpose of the visit was:
- to organize meetings with the specialists and responsible persons of Aghavnavank, Khachardzan, Haghartsin, Teghut and Gosh villages of Dilijan community of Tavush Marz, RA.
- to clarify the areas and volumes of actions envisaged in the project concept.
A meeting was organized with the mayor of the town of Dilijan and the administrative representatives of Aghavnavank, Khachardzan, Haghartsin, Teghut and Gosh villages. The participants were briefly presented with the results of the development of project proposal’s full package and the problems which have emerged during expert visits. Specifically, a necessity to discuss and finally clarify the procedure of provision of common usage solar dryers for fruit and herbs, non-heated greenhouses, solar water heaters to residents with the head of community, administrative officials of villages and other stakeholders has emerged. The principle that these should be allocated to the NGOs, schools, kindergartens, women, youth unions or other beneficiary groups as well as, to the socially vulnerable and multi-member families has been accepted as a primary criterion. As a result of stakeholder discussions it was decided that similar facilities must be provided to the communities. The communities will provide solar dryers for fruit and herbs, non-heated greenhouses, solar water heaters to the stakeholders based on participatory approaches during the project implementation. The stakeholders will use these facilities in a most efficient way and be in charge of creating conditions that will ensure their accessibility to other residents of the communities. The participants also discussed opportunities of installing solar water heaters. The general idea was that heaters are efficient and will save sufficient money from the community budgets, which can be used to ensure project continuation, as well as to implement other environmental projects. However, there are some technical issues including permanent water supply which currently has no solution in some of the communities, and consequently, makes the installation of solar water heaters impossible. The participants of discussions proposed to envisage solar water heater in the program, with the expectation, that this technical issue will be solves in several communities before the project financing. The administrative officer of Hovk village requested to include the village in the project, which is a part of Dilijan community. Project experts and administrative officers of Aghavnavank, Gosh and Haghartsin villages observed the areas where orchards will be established. These are thought to increase revenues of the residents and contribute to the prevention of the area’s further degradation. The list of additional activities, that residents want to actualize were also discussed during the meeting. In general, these regard to the introduction of such berry and vegetable varieties that are mostly adapted to the climate change and have a high demand in the market. The participants highlighted the activities aimed at the increase of knowledge level once again. It was suggested that workshop topics include materials enhancing the efficiency of agricultural activities, development of ecotourism, introduction of new crops and disclosure of herbal remedy processing possibilities.
