10, Rue Jean Engling
1466 Luxembourg
لوكسمبورغ
- International/Cultural relations
Amities Luxembourg - Armenie a.s.b.l. (ALA) was registered at the beginning of 2016. The president of the organization is Mr. Samvel Arakelian, who is responsible for the general operations of the NGO. The key staff members are:
Seg Kirakossian is the project coordinator of the ALA. He is in charge of the project management several components: general, creative, IT and technical support. He is specialized in filmmaking and media production, leading training projects for different organizations, among them the US-based MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL (MSI). Since 2012 he is working as a trainer of media production and peace education, implemented workshops and trainings in Armenia, Luxembourg, Italy, Sweden, Czech Republic etc.
Taguhi Kharatyan is the coordinator of international educational projects. She is responsible for the organization’s educational activities as well as for finding partners, creating effective cooperation, and monitoring the quality of ALA participation in the projects.
Usually, the annual budget is approximately 100.000 EUR and the main sources of funding are Erasmus Plus programme and several national grants. ALA’s main activities are long term training courses, youth exchanges, seminars and conferences. ALA is cooperating with many national and international organizations, mainly from EU, MEDA and EECA member countries.
The mission of the ALA is to assist and strengthen the Luxembourgish society where cultural diversity is respected and valorized, and where people from different cultural backgrounds work hand in hand for the solution of global problems and sustainable development.
Aims and objectives of the organization:
Promotion of intercultural, inter-religious and inter-civilization dialogue;
Consolidation of the potential of representatives of different cultures for the solution of global challenges;
Promotion of the cultures and sub-cultures represented in Luxembourg.
Organization of various international youth projects in the framework of the programs of Council of Europe and European Commission
Despite the ALA was registered at the beginning of 2016 but the initiative group started its activities already in 2014 when the 3 of the representatives of the Armenian community in Luxembourg participated in the “No hate speech” campaign of the Council of Europe. As a follow-up idea, the initiative group of the organisation implemented a raising awareness campaign on combating hate speech. The organisation started several workshops on intercultural learning in the frame of which representatives of the different cultural, language, national and religious communities of Luxembourg had an opportunity to present the singularities of their cultures and try to find commonalities with the others. Since the initiative group of the organisation consists of youth workers, trainers of human rights education and intercultural learning specialists, ALA develops its methodological toolbox for the realization of Intercultural Learning activities and has developed several exercises, handouts, presentations, simulations, role-plays and other tools for intercultural, inter-faith and other types of activities.
Some of the previous projects:
“InFormalBasic Course” long-term training course (2018)
The main aim of the training course was the integration of a non-formal education approach to the formal education system for youth empowerment at the local level. It was an attempt to use non-formal education (NFE) to build a productive co-working platform for educators coming from formal education and the youth field. This training course was the third edition of “InFormal” project. Its idea was developed due to the experience and learning outcomes of the first 2 versions of InFormal and it was adjusted to the feedback and evaluation of the participants as well as general assessment by the project team.
“CommunicART” long term project (2019)
The main aim of the long term project CommunicART was to foster non-violent communication in the educational process addressing current challenges such as intercultural dialogue in the work with people coming from rural areas or preventing the radicalization of young people through music and drama as effective tools.
Facilitation Guide long term project (2019)
This long term training course was focused on building on facilitation skills targeting all types of educators working in the formal or non-formal educational sphere. Facilitation skills are often taken or educators have to learn them by practice, often instinctively. However, facilitation is an essential generic skill and it is hard to overestimate the importance of it in the group (learning) process. This long-term course was an attempt to give a structured approach to the art of facilitation among educators.
“WomInPower” long term project (2019-2021)
The aim of project "WomInPower” is the empowerment of on different levels: at the individual level, to support the creation of their autonomy and economic independence, and on the social level, to promote their equal access to political, social power and to the power enabling the forming of opinion. We are sure that the process of empowerment should be started by the youth workers and our project idea is to support them in this. The project is aimed to promote young women entrepreneurship by empowering youth workers from different countries with project development and implementation competencies.
ARTinclusive long term project (2019-2021)
Human rights practitioners prove that theatre is used as a powerful tool in human rights work and theatre exercises and tools have been particularly useful for groups and communities that are looking to solve their problems. Yet, despite this, one of the biggest "minority" groups of our world, people with special needs are limited in their possibilities to use this powerful tool. The idea of the project is to provide a space for youth workers to experience, exchange and develop new methodologies for implementing activities in the local reality for the inclusion of people with special needs by using theatre and performance arts. We have realized that even those who involve young people with special needs in their training courses or local activities never asked themselves such questions: How inclusive can we be in our creativity? Creative activities and self-expression can so often seem off-limits to many people – and this includes the world of theatre equally.
The target group of ALA is not only Armenians living in Luxembourg, but also other cultural and national minorities. After becoming a member of Anna Lindh Foundation network we will organize more offline and online activities to share and spread three main purposes that ALF believes in. ALA is planning to organize info sessions for other organizations in Luxembourg about the Anna Lindh Foundation, the possibilities it provides. During our future projects that will be funded by the ALF we will include the logo of the foundation on our promotional materials to raise visibility in this way as well. Despite this, we will follow the projects financed by AFL and implemented by other organizations to share the best results through our social media accounts.
The Amities Luxembourg - Armenie a.s.b.l. is a relatively new organization but our team consists of experienced professionals working in the fields of education, human rights, integration and intercultural learning. We believe that it’s important to foster intercultural, interreligious and international competences, develop dialogue between the countries, minority and majority groups. We are very interested in becoming member of the ALF Luxembourg Network as during our experience of cooperation with the Heads of the ALF Networks in Jordan and Slovenia realised that there is a great potential of networking with the organisations that share the same values as the ALA. Our EuroMed experience was limited in cooperation with the organisations from Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, but we are interested in enlarging our network and promote the values of Democracy, Dialogue and Diversity.