December 23rd, 2008

December 23rd, 2008
page 3 of 6

I volunteer 30 hours a week at two places. This is Counterpart. It's office takes up a building that used to hold several apartments (which is common in Yerevan).

Counterpart is an international NGO that has projects across the world, the one in Armenia being funded throught the U.S. government via USAID. Mainly counterpart distributes grant. The organisation works on Civil Advocacy - i.e. trying to increase citizens involvement in their government.

My job is I am creating small, 5 minute podcasts with my coworker Maro (an old Birthright Volunteer who decided to stay) about success that the organizations helped by Counterpart have had. We interview people, and throw together short, NPR like segments. While offices aren't exactly my favorite places, I do enjoy working with sound and am interested in radio, so I am into it the project.

This is me at my desk looking like I always do at work.

Here is what the rest of the office looks like from the vantage of my seat. You can see I am hard at work on GMail writing letters to friends in America.

Christine, by good friend who was on Birthright with me, also worked at Counterpart. We would write e-mails to each other from across the room and have dance parties by way of my laptop speakers when our Armenian-born paid-employee office-mates were out of the room. When they would catch us we would just say it was an American tradition. She went back to the New York City a couple weeks ago so the parties have stopped. Here is her hard at work a few days little before she left.

Actually she isn't hard at work at all! She was just pretending! No, but really, she worked hard putting together teaching manuals. But if I remember correctly, the power had just gone out so everyone in the office was waiting for the problem to be fixed. We passed the time by taking pictures and eating paklava. About once a month the power goes out for an hour or two, occasionally for most of the day. And it usually doesn't just go out and come on, but it sort of goes between the two states at half-hour intervals. All the computers have machines that provide a few minutes of power so you can save your work. But we're on the same grid at Parliament, so if we don't have power, they don't have power either.

The other place I work at (I didn't actually go into the office that day, but here's a picture) is a place called Utopiana. It is also an NGO (nonprofit) but can be more accurately described an artists collective. They have resources for musicians and filmakers to make music and films and to get grants and publicity. But it is also a place to hang out, the people who are involved there are always there, and they are mostly if not all unpaid. People are always there working on projects, people come in and out, they make meals in the kitchen. Everyone there is quite political and some are self-proclaimed anarchists.

In this picture Tsomak is putting an incredibly intricate stencil of the Simpsons dressed in christmas garb. Next to her is Melanie, my fellow Birthright volunteer. But more on them later.

After being there three months I am still not entirly sure what they are, but then again I don't think they do either. It is more of a place that has the space, resources and community for people to work on their personal and collective artistic and political projects. While there you feel like you are in someone's house. Oh, also I am the only male in the whole place. Utopiana is in the same flat at the Women's Resource Center, a great NGO doing Armenia's best work with women's rights. It is a much larger organization, but since they share the same flat they both blend into each other in terms of projects, personel and ideas. Also, a lot of Birthright volunteers have gone through the Women's Resource Center.

The place is very different from Counterpart, much much less official, less organized and less funded. My tasks there are also less clear. I started by helping them find equipment to set up a small sound studio. Then I started teaching bi-weekly class on how to record sound. The class started with 2-3 people and ended with only 1 (Tsomak of the above picture) and half the time I would show up and the class would be canceled. But now that I've taught the class, Tsomak is going to teach it to other and I made her a 20-page manual to help out. Now I've started a project where I am recording Tsomak's band and other bands and am going to try to put together a CD of their music. I might also be looking for and writing grants for them. I also help them with music software and occasional computer problems. I also sometimes just hang out there.

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