Outreach Magazine
By Amanda E. Swennes
Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach
Winter 2008

	Students taking UGA's first study abroad service-learning course in Armenia, a landlocked country between Europe and Asia, learned about the country's Christian heritage and recent transition to democracy.

Alisha Santoorjian has spent her whole life repeatedly pronouncing and spelling her name for people. "My last name is one of the things people first notice about me and it's the part of my heritage that I identify with most," said Santoorjian, who is one-fourth Armenian. Like many of the more than half-a-million Armenians living in the United States, she grew up hearing stories about her ancestral homeland—from its ancient history and status as one of the world's first Christian countries to its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991.

As a freshman at the University of Minnesota, Santoorjian decided it was time to see Armenia for herself so she Googled for study abroad opportunities there. During May 2007, she joined four University of Georgia students and three other students from colleges across the country for UGA's first study abroad program in Armenia, a predominantly Christian country bordering Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

The students in the course spent three weeks in the capital city of Yerevan and the surrounding region studying Armenia's history, culture, and post-Soviet Union government and economy.

"What Armenians are experiencing now is equivalent to the Great Depression," said Glenn Ames, director of the Armenia study abroad program and UGA's Office of International Public Service and Outreach. "After gaining independence, Armenia endured a collapse of the basic institutions that govern a country, like a political system and an economy, and those institutions have to be rebuilt."

To better understand Armenia's long transition from communism to demo- cracy and from a planned economy to a market economy, the students attended presentations by both government and non-government organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the Center for Agribusiness and Rural Development.

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	• UGA in Armenia Program

For a more personal look at Armenia's history and culture, they visited monasteries, museums, markets and local businesses. They also planted seeds to help with the Armenian Tree Project's reforestation efforts, helped a family build a traditional house with Habitat for Humanity Armenia and learned how to make lavash—traditional unleavened bread—at the Saramej Women's Union.

"It was great to see how countries develop and how much it means to someone when you take the time to help them," Santoorjian said. "Doing hands-on work and participating in the culture took this trip from just a class to an experience." For the four students in the program who are of Armenian descent, the program was more than just part of their college education.

"Children of the Armenian diaspora hear their relatives and grandparents talk about Armenia and its impact on their lives but don't understand the context of their cultural homeland," Ames said. "After being in Armenia, they better understand the historical and cultural context of what it means to be Armenian."