“The district militia officer of ours, God bless him, he brought us here saying ‘Do something if you can.’ So did I. There was a huge pile of garbage here, a pesthole for cholera. So all of us together with my children, we worked and brought the place to an order. We bought this little shelter and brought it here,” says Anush Manukyan, a resident of the Shengavit community in Yerevan, who lives with her three children – a son and two daughters, and her daughters’ three children.

“I used to collect empty bottles, sell liquid bleach. I somehow managed to buy this [temporary house] and gathered my children under one roof,” Anush recalls.

This 48-year-old woman, who shoulders the burden of her family bought the shelter eight years ago. The family cleaned the piece of land by hand, taking away garbage and stones. Modest as it is, it is an improvement over their previous “residence” – in a cemetery in Karmir Blur (near Yerevan).

Six non-governmental organizations from the provinces of Vayots Dzor and Syunik, participating in a series of trainings within the framework of the Coalition Building Project initiated in a joint effort by the Armenian Assembly of America (www.aaainc.org, AAA), The League of Women Voters of the United States, the Yerevan-based NGO Center Civil Society Development Organization, announced the creation of a “Clean Community Coalition”.

(Related article: http://www.armenianow.com/?action=viewArticle&AID=3354 )

At a press conference in Tesaket press club November 26th the representatives of the coalition member organizations stated their mission to promote environmental protection and encourage healthy lifestyle in their communities. In particular the participants stated of their commitment to promote programs aimed to improve garbage collection on the local level.

A leading American-Armenian advocacy group this week encouraged the United States president-elect to make good on his promise to affirm the Armenian Genocide.

Arpi Vartanian, the country director for Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh offices of the Armenian Assembly of America (www.aaainc.org), said at a press conference in Yerevan Thursday that the organization cherishes strong hopes that Barack Obama will live up to his pre-election commitment to the influential Armenian community in the US to recognize the mass killings and deportations of Armenians organized and perpetrated by Turkish authorities in 1915-1923 as genocide.

Armenian Assembly of America Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh country director Arpi Vartanian met with journalists at the “Tesaket” Press Club in Yerevan October 17, addressing issues including the upcoming US presidential election and Turkish-Armenian relations.

“Many of the Armenians, as far as I have heard, are more Obama supporters rather than McCain’s, not only because of his vision of the domestic problems, but also because of the genocide [recognition] issue,”as Obama has repeatedly mentioned the necessity to recognize the fact of the Genocide, said Vartanian.

The letter by the US presidential nominee John McCain’s campaign to the American Armenian community on September 29 expressed the Republican senator’s gratitude “for all of the contributions” that the Armenian Americans have made to the country, however refraining from qualifying the mass killings of Armenians in Western Armenia organized and perpetrated by the Ottoman authorities in 1915-1923 as genocide.

The letter particularly stated: “It is fair to say that one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, the brutal murder of as many as one and a half million Armenians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, has also been one of the most neglected. The suffering endured by the Armenian people during that period represented the prologue to what has come to be known as humanity’s bloodiest century.”

The Senator’s comments drew response from at least one Armenian-American lobbying group.

In late December US President George W. Bush signed the fiscal year 2008 overall appropriations package which allocates $58.5 million to Armenia.

The aid figures $16.5 million less than last year, but is more than the Administration’s request of $35 million. Congress had also approved $3 million in foreign military financing assistance to Armenia and Azerbaijan, reversing the Administration’s bid to retreat from its 2001 pledge to maintain parity in military aid to Armenia and Azerbaijan. Despite Azerbaijan’s continued war rhetoric throughout the year and increase of its military budget, the Administration had proposed to provide Baku with $2 million more in military assistance, but eventually approved only the initial amount.

Two years ago the Asatryans – a family of four – moved to Metsamor from the village of Lernagog. Yeghsik Hakobyan, 30 and her three children aged 13, 12 and 9, rented an apartment in a building where the stench of the damaged sewage is a visit card.

“My husband passed away in 1998. My youngest was born just twenty days before the accident – an accident with my husband in the car,” Yeghsik begins to tell the hard story of her family.

Arkadi, the youngest, is in second grade. He is thin, shortish and pale. The boy lags behind his peers in physical growth because of malnutrition.

“When I come to Armenia, I feel at home. And here, I listen, and I yearn to go back to the stories of my family. This country I grew to love, but did not truly understand why. Because, at first, I loved it without sight and without reason. Because I loved it; loved my family, loved my heritage. Loved my Armenianness,” writes Deanna Cachoian-Schanz, Depi Hayk Participant/Armenian Assembly of America Summer 2007 intern, reflecting on her experience this year. “I traveled in search of myself in Hayastan. And I found friends, and I found laughter. And I cried at the sight of Mt. Ararat. My Mt. Ararat. And I saw the villages where my great grandmother’s parents had grown, and I swam in blue Sevan. And I saw myself in the rivers, in the sky, in the people. And I fell in love.”

A US State Department International Religious Freedom Report released last week criticized Turkey for its continuous policy of imposing restrictions on minority religious groups, particularly the Armenian and the Greek communities, who continue to seek legal recognition of their status.

Ethnic minority communities are prevented the right to own and transfer property and train religious clergy.

In 1974 amid political tensions over Cyprus, the report says, the High Court of Appeals overturned a 1936 declaration against minorities in Turkey owning property.

Amidst growing pressure to prevent the passage of a pending resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 by the United States Congress, the traditionally strong efforts of some Jewish community representatives and organizations to support the preventive attempts seem to shatter.

The most vivid examples are the recent developments in New England, which resulted in one of the most influential Jewish advocacy organizations the Anti-Defamation League’s cautious recognition of the historical fact.

“We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities.