Aregouni village, Geghargounik Region, Republic of Armenia

Aregouni Clinic Sponsor – Armenian American Medical Society of California

Aregouni School Sponsor – United Armenian Students, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Aregouni today

The village of Aregouni is located on the eastern front of Lake Sevan in the Republic of Armenia , near the Azerbaijani border. The strategically located community enjoys favorable, sunny climatic conditions, making it ideal for cattle farming.

Located 8Km from the border and 23Km north-east of the regional city of Vardenis, Aregouni's lush, fertile agricultural lands, the lake's proximity and favorable climatic conditions, have, during the Soviet years, attracted the neighboring azeris towards the village as they have, in peaceful times, slowly, pushed the local Armenian inhabitants out of their homes, making the entire region, by the late 1980's, mostly populated by azeris. Starting in 1988, at the start of the Karabagh liberation struggle, as the pogroms were being organized and perpetrated against the large Armenian populations of the major Azerbaijani cities of Bakou and Sumgait , the fleeing Armenian families were gradually settled into Aregouni and the other eastern seaboard villages of Lake Sevan .

Presently Aregouni has 365 souls, 134 families.

A side from the Community Center building, the only other functioning community building is of the school, which serves as the school, the clinic and election center. Although the building is overall, as well as structurally, in extremely poor and almost dangerous conditions, it houses 82 students and 30 staff whose only other option is to stay home. The village has no kindergarten and lacks a dedicated clinic building.

YERKIR, Union of non-governmental organizations for repatriation and settlement, gives much importance to Armenian border communities such as Aregouni. The organization recognizes the lack of infrastructural amenities of these border villages, largely populated by refugees who actually have a greater need for support and normal lives. These refugee communities are a top priority for YERKIR, as they should be for the country, for several key reasons:

1. The creation of normal, sustainable lives for the bordering refugee communities constitutes a national and political priority for the whole country.

2. The mostly turkish azeri population of the border regions of Armenia , were an undeniable treat to the security of the country.

3. The improvement of the socio-economic conditions of life of the bordering refugee communities is key to the stability of the country.

The development and welfare of the bordering refugee communities will undoubtedly provide for a more stable regional security between the Republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Karabagh.