Robert Dietrich

I’ve spent the last few weeks working on the main housing unit of the organic chicken farm that I funded through the generous donations of Stella Aslibekyan, J.T. Gottwald, Nelli Martirosyan, Paul Sookiasian, Armen Yesayan, Sergey Babayan and a good sized group of my close friends and family.  The largest single donation was made on behalf of Helen Saribekyan and Alexandra Melikian of Phoenix, AZ in the name of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Arizona (over half).  It’s taken a lot of effort to bring this one around, but it’s been as fun as it has been challenging.

We’re reorganizing twenty years of accumulated junk while we build, so finding creative ways to utilize pre-existing materials is fun.  So far the crown jewels have been:  a 50s-era dentist chair, wooden skis, a truck axle, some sort of propeller, and what I think is a 100 kilo wrecking ball (partly buried, and I think it’ll stay that way).  I think we’ll have everything wrapped up in two weeks!  The first housing unit is almost complete - one more to go!

We’ve scheduled our first round of seminars for local farmers on small-scale organic production for the first week of June.  I’m going to wait to see how attendance is on our first series before scheduling a second round, but I have high hopes.

I’m also in the preparation stages for our big community convention that will engage the private and public sector in a dialogue on local needs, and in determining a vision for Sevan, which will include developing a two year strategic plan that includes (ideally) the major input of all stakeholder groups involved.  We’re starting by holding separate meetings with local business owners, organized by industry groups, to set independent priorities and begin a dialogue with local government counterparts.  Then we’ll be meeting and working with youth and other community stakeholder groups.  After several such stakeholder-local government meetings, we’re going to have a larger convention with “stakeholder delegates” to workshop a shared vision, and strategic plan for development, for the Sevan MSA.  It’s going to be a long process of getting everyone to communicate, but I’m greatly looking forward to the first community convention that will begin the process.  There is a lot of work going into the processes of this project, and getting everyone to put in the same amount of effort and concentration.  I think we’ll definitely have some powerful outcomes from this work.

My youth development project with Technodrom is just now finishing training in the final village (Gomadzor).  We’re planning the village team training seminars right now, and organizing funding for the project presentations that will be held in a venue (to-be-determined) where judges will grant one team up to $1500 in funds for the implementation of their community development project.  All teams are receiving a lot of support from their community, including the local village governments.  We’re expecting a big turnout from all areas for the village youth team presentations.  Local and national media should be in attendance, and our panel of judges will include local government reps, Peace Corps Volunteers and international NGO / intergovernmental staff reps.  The kids are excited, motivated, focused and ENGAGED.  This project has already been a huge success in my opinion.  I think all village teams will have enough support from their communities, independent of our funding, to organize and implement their projects to varying degrees.  And who knows what will come out of the presentation event…..

My business consulting has been going very well.  I conducted a business plan boot camp for local entrepreneurs, and facilitated some very enlightening conversations on planning in Armenia.  Not easy.  But everyone had a very productive time, and were pleased to have attended.  Aside from this, I’m working on the development of two business plans collaborating with some very enthusiastic entrepreneurs.  One has a small factory in place for constructing window and door framing and the other is developing a small programming business, hoping to garner outsourced referral IT work from the US.  Both are exciting projects and can’t wait to see what happens down the road.

My business development work is going well; I only have one marketing consulting project currently.  I’ve been extremely busy with our Post’s annual report, and am getting ready to author some more materials.  I’m also getting ready for the new class of Peace Corps Volunteers (the 17^th group to serve in Armenia will arrive in June).  I’ll be working as a technical trainer for the Community & Business Development program class of Volunteers in Charents-Savan this summer, and I’m very excited about that.

And that’s it for my update today.  I’ve got other things going on, aside from the things I’ve mentioned here, and will update you all more extensively next time. 

Stay well!

Robert