During three years we have reveled 20 female-heroes/video/

Rural women

“At first when 37 united, it seemed to us that it was an absurd that only women can do the job we are doing now, but the time showed that we can”, – said the president of agricultural cooperation “Hermon” in Vayots Dzor region Naira Mnacakanyan today during the meeting with reporters presenting the history of cooperatives.

Presidents of cooperatives say that OXFAM has helped women a lot, we can say that it has revealed leaders.

“Today we have jobs, variety of crops, we are able to establish greenhouse farms, dryers and want to cultivate greenhouse crops and make our village become a little Switzerland”, – says the president of the cooperative of Vayots Dzor Gomq community, adding that due to the job many people forget about leaving the country.

Women who have already registered some success in cooperative economy confirm that through OXFAM they get a certain amount of credit with the help of which they have started an agricultural program.

The leaders of the cooperatives also mentioned that they have started to cultivate different types of tomato whereas they had only had one traditional type of tomato. “This type used to be sour in our area. But now we cultivate such kind of models which are of better quality and frost-hardy”.

Let us mention that OXFAM with the support of “Armenian Young Women’s Association” (AYWA) , chooses poorer, borderline villages and refugee-populated communities. By the way it is already 3 years since OXFAM and “Armenian Young Women’s Association” represent Female Food Hero in agricultural production sector. This year the competition was held within the framework of agricultural cooperatives of Vayots Dzor and Tavush regions.

The president of AYWA Lilit Asatryan said that the results of this year’s competition will be summed up tomorrow in Lover’s Park.

Through this competition and program we try to increase woman’s role in the agricultural sector. During three years we have revealed 20 Female Food Heroes who have contributed to the development of the community agriculture carrying out significant activities. And they need to be encouraged”, -said Lilit Asatryan.

By Armine Gevorgyan

Watch the video of the conference provided by the Agency “Noyan Tapan”