Hanganak is Actively Looking for its Beneficiaries

The staff of Hanganak, forcibly displaced from Artsakh to Armenia along with the entire population, immediately began work upon arrival, despite the difficulties of settling in new places. Three years ago, during the 44-day war, the organization already faced similar problems in determining the location of  beneficiaries and providing them with possible assistance as soon as possible.

Some beneficiaries have been in constant contact with the Hanganak employees since the very first days of their forced displacement. To determine the whereabouts of the others, whose contact details the organization does not have, connection was established with friends and relatives. This is how a fairly large group of beneficiaries was found. However, we did not have any information about many other beneficiaries of the organization.

On October 3, at the first meeting of the Hanganak team, as well as at a meeting held recently at the Fund for Armenian Relief (FAR), options for possible accommodation of lonely elderly people from Artsakh were discussed. In particular, nursing homes operating in Hankavan, Aghavnadzor, Vanadzor and other regions of Armenia were mentioned. Last week, having visited the State Migration Service of Ministry of Territorial Administration and Development of the Republic of Armenia, we requested information about our beneficiaries from among the forcibly displaced population. The deputy head of the service said that he would offer any cooperation.

However, we could not sit and simply wait to receive this information, so we decided to independently visit possible locations of elderly people, see them, talk, deal with problems on the spot and help in any way we can.

We decided to make our first trip to the Aghavnadzor nursing home, which is a branch of the Nork nursing home in Yerevan. After about an hour and a half we reached the place and were very happy to see our two beneficiaries walking in the yard. The nursing house is set in beautiful surrounding: in front of the building there is a beautiful park with benches, and further away there is an apple orchard.

We reached out to an administration official with a request to help us find our beneficiaries. But, as it turned out, we cannot be provided with such information without approval of superiors. Soon the director came and repeated the same thing that they should have written permission from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, after which we will be provided with the requested information. However, the director made a call to the ministry and said that we can send a list of our beneficiaries by email, after which they will notify who is in their two branches, Nork and Aghavnadzor nursing homes.

And yet we couldn’t return home empty-handed. Through our beneficiaries walking around the yard, we learned about our other beneficiaries living in Aghavnadzor. In a very short time, five more beneficiaries joined us. In total, we found 7 of our beneficiaries in Aghavnadzor. We received positive answers to questions about their living conditions. Mainly, they were largely happy with their living conditions and food, although they were very depressed by what had happened and were sad about the loss of their homeland.

We were not allowed to go up to see the residents’ rooms, canteen, toilets and other facilities, but the officials promised that it would be possible with written permission.

To date, we have located 205 of our beneficiaries, of which 5 beneficiaries have moved to Russia.

If anyone has any information about lonely elderly citizens of Artsakh, please contact the responsible employee of Hanganak by phone 097770900, 097201125 or 093248087.