On September 17, representatives of Austrian Mass Media Outlets visited Armenian Red Cross Society Headquarters, to get introduced with Increased Resilience of Syrian Armenians and Host Population – IRIS programme.
Michael Grabner, IRIS Overall Programme Manager, Dorothea Auer, Director of Development Cooperation of the Austrian Foreign Ministry, Gerhard Schaumberger, Head of Office for the South Caucasus, Austrian Development Cooperation, and others were in Austrian Delegation. Members of Consortium, Armenian Caritas (AC), SME Cooperation Association NGO (SME) and Centre for Coordination of Syrian Armenian’s Issues (CCSAI), implementing the IRIS programme, attended the meeting as well.
“I am pleased to welcome you all in our Headquarters, and I appreciate this opportunity to introduce this programme to you. We are implementing it with Consortium, and I am glad, that our local partners are here today as well. Population Movement is one of our Strategic Directions, we have been working in Refugee protection and support direction for many years. Thanks to this programme the quality of our services will be improved and we will have more close cooperation with our partners operating in this field. I’d like to express my gratitude to European Union, Austrian Development Agency and Austrian Red Cross, for cooperation and support”, Dr. Anna Yeghiazaryan, ARCS Secretary General said.
Michael Grabner, IRIS Overall Programme Manager, introduced the programme objectives and expected results, mentioning, that accepting 22 000 Syrian refugees makes Armenia the 3rd country in Europe by refugees mer capita.
After, the Consortium members presented their experience and activites to be implemented in the frames of the IRIS programmee.
The journalists and guests asked questions mainly about economic and cultural integration of Syrian Armenians, particularly about the differences of two branches of Armenian language, the main fields of business interest, etc.
Then, they visited the beneficiaries supported by ADA funded projects, to get acquinted with their successes due to this support.
