CYSCA's most recent student trip to Armenia took place last June when educator and CYSCA Program Director Joanne Hartunian led a group of six teenagers from high schools in the greater Cambridge Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.

The three-week trip theme was Building Bridges: Secondary School Partnerships to Promote Civil Society. The group was hosted by Armenian families and School #106 in the Nork Massiv region at the Knights and Daughters of Vartan Schoo Complex, whose principal Mr. Yuri Jilavian is the YCSCA president.

The students brought with them 20 70-pound boxes of materials which were distributed at the Knights and Daughters of Vartan School Complex, the Noubarashen Home for Delinquent Boys, a special needs school which neighbors School #106 and needy students in partner schools #65 in Shengavit and #190 in the Southwest District. The materials included school supplies, English dictionaries and a new electronic blood pressure cuff, which was donated to hospital #6.

On July 4, Diane M. Spera, educator, led a teaching workshop, trained student teachers and led a class on the meaning of Valentine's Day, recently introduced to Armenia by Project Harmony and the Grand Candy Company. One question that emerged from the discussion was whether, when celebrating the holiday in a classroom, students should be required to send a valentine to each person in the class, or be permitted to be selective. Students discussed the concepts of exclusivity and inclusivity in a civil society and distributed handmade valentine cards.

The visiting students presented interactive project topics that included politics, smoking, music lyrics and gender, and led a search-engine workshop with the Armenian students. CYSCA students who participated in the interactive projects included: Christopher Albano, Belmont High School; Lia Barnes Lenart, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School; Anna Brody, Cambridge School of Weston; Michael Spera, Lexington High School: Stefan Tilke, Belmont High School and Scott Yerganian, Medfield High School.

The highlight of the trip was a three-day visit to a village with the students' home-stay host peers where the students prepared the barn for winter by piling hay; beat wool to make Armenian wool quilts (yermugs); prepared meals from scratch, which entailed buying chickens and a lamb from other farmers, which needed to be slaughtered; shopped for each meal at the local store, and made their meals with local ingredientsThey soon realized they had consumed all the eggs in the village simply for breakfast.

After each meal, the students sorted scraps from their plates for their host's cow and neighbor's chickens.

The chickens responded to this by laying more eggs and it was soon learned that their host's cow would bear a calf in the spring. Discovering that the cost would be prohibitive and their host would have to sell the cow and her unborn calf, the students donated $400 to purchase the cow and her unborn calf and covered the cost of feed, shots and delivery of the calf with the proviso that when it was born, their host would donate it to another family.

The calf is to be named CYSCA and is expected in the late spring. At that time both the Armenian and American students will decide which of the villagers will receive the calf. The family will be asked in turn to donate its firstborn to another family.

In addition to the village, the students visited a hospital, where those interested in medicine had the opportunity to wear scrubs in an operating room and observe several surgeries; as well as, the World Bank, where CYSCA alumna, Esther Demerchyan, who works at the bank, hosted the group. They also visited many museums and churches, swam in Lake Sevan, visited the hot water springs of Jermuk as well as the sites of historical and cultural significance to the Armenian People.

Official visits were made to Yerevan State University, the newly built City Hall, the Peace Corps, the UN building and the new US Embassy, which helped both groups of students understand the significance of change in Armenia, Community Connections alumnus , Prof. Agassi Enokyan , gave a lecture in English on the "Political Parties ofArmenia" and "Armenia's Constitution" at Yerevan State University, which shed light on Armenia's poletical, economic and social problems in the context of thr country's current development.

In the winter of 2004-05, the 45 students in the two eighth grade science classes at the Tobin School in Cambridge studied how to save energy, taught by Science teacher Tad Sudnick and 33 students of the Vardanantz Aspetner (Knights and Daughters of Vartan) School #106 in Yerevan formed an after-school group to study in parallel with them, emailing each other about their progress.

In Yerevan, the project began with a workshop for thhe students and teachers, with guests from the Ministry of Education, the local municipality and advocates of solar power and ecotourism. Organizer Astghine Pasoyan encouraged the students to "Think about how to save energy in a wise way. If you can understand this idea, you can explain it to others and you can be an ambassador and change opinions....The Earth is the same for all of us. Everything is linked." The Tobin project began with a special meeting in the school auditorium, in which students play a "Jeopardy"-like game based on facts they had learned about Armenia and the lives of their new pen-pals.

While the Yerevan group met weekly for a semester, covering a broad array of topics, they entered into several parallel activities with Cambridge. Everyone filled out a Personal Energy Calculator chart designed to be used in any country to add up an individual person's energy consumption. Tobin students visited the new Cambridge City Hall Annex, a "green" building with a heat pump, and constructed with "green" materials. The Yerevan students took a field trip to their local traditional gas-fired power plant. Physics teacher Arpine Harutyunyan commented that while students study about transformation of heat into electricity in theory, it was important to have a chance to show them the process-- to see all the equipment and the chain of processes, and to hear the numerical data about the working of the station. Tobin students devoted one class period to trying out a bicycle-powered generator that was hooked up to both an incandescent light bulb and a compact fluorescent one, and comparing their efficiency.

Both groups were assigned to come up with imaginative ideas for gadgets or methods to save energy which we called "What IFS"

(IFS="Inventions for Sustainability"). The Yerevan students put winning designs on a T-shirt, and produced a short newsletter. The Tobin students made short videos in which they presented the winning designs with lively scripts and diagrams and dance performance interludes by the 8th Grade Girls' Dance Group.

The project was funded by a grant from the US State Department, through Sister Cities International, as part of their "Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia and the Balkans Sustainable Development Exchange Program."

For more information, see websites for CYSCA www.cysca.org, YCSCA www.ycsca.am and The Tobin School www.cpsd.us/element/tobin/directory/Grade8/Energy_Project/Intro.html

NILE RIVER BASIN DIALOGUE

Since February, student after-school clubs at Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School and School #190 in Yerevan have been taking on a topic that is far afield from their own daily concerns, and far from their own national boundaries,, but is of global significance. They are researching and taking on the roles of the ten African countries that depend on the water of the Nile Basin. Through email they will enter into a mock negotiation to agree on how to share access to the water.

The advisor in Cambridge is Aren Ghazarian, an alumnus of the CYSCA summer program who has experience working in a number of international settings, and a deep interest in conflict resolution. Toether with CYSCA Coordinator Joanne Hartunian, he will seek to bring in experts from local universities and NGOs.

Partial funding for this project was received through a grant given by Hewlett Packard to Sister Cities International to fund four sister-cities ies partnerships to promote global citizenship and community leadership in young people worldwide. The other partnerships are: Rice Lake, Wisconsin with Zamberk, Czech Republic; San Diego, California with Jalalabad, Afghanistan and Sebastopol, California with Chihirin, Ukraine. In addition, four students from each partnership will be selected to take part in SCI's 50th Anniversary International Youth Summit on Global Citizenship in July, which is part of SCI's 50th Anniversary Conference.