From Parliamentary Campaign towards local Elections

A group of U.S. university graduates organized capacity building trainings for women involved in political parties in Armenia’s second largest city of Gyumri ahead of Parliamentary Elections in Armenia. The trainings, organized in the month of March, benefited some 60 women from five political parties represented in Armenia’s outgoing National Assembly. Party women were presented with skills to carry out community needs assessment and prepare for an effective campaign to run for office. The project was made possible by an award from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the U.S. Department of State, through a program administered by IREX (International Research & Exchanges Board).

One of the participants is writing that community needs assessment can serve as a basis for a pre-election program to promote her candidacy as well as any further political activity. Another participant, Araksya Gevorgyan, is telling that she has already managed to apply, in part, the skills learned during the training for her political party candidate’s election campaign. “Probably those skills would be more useful for me in forthcoming local government elections,” Araksya says.

The organizers of the project consider their contribution to be small in terms of promoting women participation in politics but are, at the same time, impressed by the activism of training participants and believe that even such small-scale initiatives can produce positive results.