The one-year self-care and wellbeing program of the Women’s Fund in Armenia, implemented with the support of the Solidarity Fund, is over. During the program, thematic meetings were held with our partners, as well as they were given sub-grants to implement their own self-care projects.
Main objectives of our project were to create a space for collective feminist care and support WFA’s partners to implement initiatives of self-care and wellbeing.
The following activities were implemented during the period of the project:
- 10 days training and individual consultations with a life coach. Our project supported by the Solidarity Fund started with master-class sessions with a coach and resilience trainer Ms. Viktoria Ter-Nikoghosyan who lives in San-Francisco. The workshop was implemented during the lockdown and it helped our partners to stay resilient and practice self-care. The sessions were concentrated on learning several techniques for addressing our different life situations; stress, pressure, fear, guilt, shame, grief, anxiety, etc.
- 3 days accompaniment-resilience and sustainability training for the Women’s Fund Armenia and their partner organizations. The accompaniment process covered topics such and impact of transgenerational wars and current war in Armenia in the middle of global Covid-19 pandemic and its effect on mental health wellbeing of feminist activists.
We also supported the following organizations and initiatives:
- Alvan Tsaghik NGO project – Sunshine – Self-Care sessions and group meetings for women in Gyumri and villages in Shirak region. Alvan Tsaghik NGO is one of the active partners of the Fund. Their project focuses on teaching and learning self-care skills for a group of 15 women.
- Project implemented by a feminist activities from LBT community called The Healing Pot – self-care and mindfulness sessions for a group of young LBT and queer people. The sessions were postponed due to the cases of violence and harassment against the team leader and some of the participants.
- Project of the initiative Totik’s called Normalizing Fears and Emotions . Self-care group sessions in Movses, Chinari and Nerkin Karmiraghbyur villages in Tavush region. The villages picked for the project are the ones that have been bombed during the conflict escalation period on the border with Azerbaijan in July 2020. Silva and Mariam, the leads of this important project, concentrate on the women’s well-being and their inner struggles and fears hidden from the outside world.
- Project from Women’s Center Shushi- socio-psychological assistance to women and girls affected by 44 days war in Nagorno Kharabagh.
- Project by Diversity NGO aimed at assisting to LBT and Trans Women. The project help them to address their fears, struggle and challenges related to the situation with the pandemic, loss of jobs, targeted firing of trans people, etc.
With this support we were able to develop a safe space for well being and resilience in the extremely challenging for the Fund and the whole country time- COVID-19 and war.
