Building Hope in Female Headed Households

Project overview: The Tavush marz (district) is situated in the north-east of Armenia which is a very difficult 400-kilometer section of the state border, of which 352 km are with Azerbaijan. A large number of the region’s communities are located on the border with Azerbaijan which due to cross border conflicts has resulted in a reduction in potential agricultural land and higher incidences of female-headed households and orphans.

Housing remains a priority with 3% of the population still residing in temporary shelters, and 20% in accommodation that does not meet established norms of 16 square meters per person.

Female headed families are one of the vulnerable groups in Tavush region, based on the fact that currently there are 122 families of war victims, who are officially registered at the regional center for improving their housing needs, out of them 36 families have lost the member/s of their family during the war and 86 families have disabled members. In the scale up period we will look at the similar statistics for other regions.

During post-Soviet period thousands of people migrated from Armenia. Armenian men continue to fill seasonal jobs working outside of Armenia. The most popular country of destination for labor migrants was, and still is, Russia:

The war affected communities that will be involved in this project have vital strategic and economic significance for the future of the whole country. Integrating these communities into Habitat for Humanity Armenia’s activities will revive these villages and prevent hopelessness and emigration.

Project aim: - The project aims to help women-headed families in the bordering areas of Tavush region, which suffered because of the Armenian-Azeri War, by providing the most cost effective solutions to have decent and affordable housing facilities. Target group for this project will be low-income and economically active families from Tavush region that are headed by women and have substandard housing conditions. These people usually don’t have access to traditional banking services because of low incomes and absence of collateral acceptable for banks, but are credit worthy, as they are generating stable income and are able to direct part of that income to repay the loan. We target to serve 50 women-headed families by the end of FY 21012.

Progress: HFH Armenia has started the implementation of the project from August 2011.

Partnership: The project is implemented in partnership with “Kamurj” UCO LLC.