Unlike the majority of the Civil Society Fellows, Gregor Avetisyan came quite late to the world of civic activism. He spent 20 years working in marketing in the commercial sector, culminating in the role of CEO of one of Armenia’s leading Marketing and Creative agencies.
He grew up in a Deaf household, with both parents having very limited opportunities for employment – reflecting a wider reality in Armenia, where Deaf people continue to face significant barriers to economic participation. With very little material support, he was only able to afford to study at university with fees being partly paid from his grandfather’s pension, and then becoming self-educated in Marketing in order to begin a professional career.
For most of his life Gregor was unfamiliar with the voluntary sector and the notion of civic activism. From an early age, although he was a key carer for his parents, they did not encourage him to formally get involved with the ‘Deaf community’. He was (and still is) a ‘CODA’ – Child of Deaf Adults – and is competent in Armenian Sign Language, yet he remarks that “my parents kept me away from being involved in the ‘Deaf’ community, partly because the community itself has historically been fragile and has struggled to have a unified voice. Even organisations representing the interests of Deaf people have often struggled to work together and with the ‘hearing’ world.”
About four years ago a friend of Gregor’s suggested that he teaches at the Yerevan Special School-Resource Center for Children with Hearing Impairments. Gregor developed a programme teaching marketing to Deaf students, and it was during this period that he began to see first-hand the issues the community was facing: major educational gaps, a lack of learning resources in Armenian Sign Language, limited employment opportunities, and gaps in public policy and accessible services. This experience pushed him to learn more about civil society, meet individually with the different actors working with the Deaf community in Armenia, and better understand the systemic challenges facing the community.
One of the major solutions that emerged from this process was a proposal Gregor developed within a USAID-funded programme for a national Video Relay Service (VRS). The proposed service would enable Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing people to communicate in Armenian Sign Language with public and private service providers through remote interpreters using an internet connection. Such an infrastructure would allow Deaf people to independently access everyday services, including banking, postal, healthcare and public services, rather than depending on family members or other hearing people to communicate on their behalf. Sadly, just as the proposal was moving towards implementation, USAID funding was withdrawn and the project could not proceed. Undeterred, Gregor looked for other opportunities that might support his growing commitment to addressing the disadvantages brought about by exclusion. Thus, his Fellowship project was born.
The ‘Empowering Deaf Youth Through STEM Education’ project provided the perfect entry point for Gregor to address another major gap he had identified: the almost complete absence of accessible educational resources in Armenian Sign Language. The Fellowship offered the first opportunity to develop educational materials in Armenia specifically designed for Deaf learners and presented in their mother language. Four accessible online STEM and creative education video courses were developed and published on the Uteach e-learning platform and YouTube, fully adapted for DHH learners through Armenian Sign Language, subtitles, spoken Armenian and visual learning materials. The State School for Children with Hearing Impairments formally approved the videos through its Principal Armine Babayan, and the materials will be used with approximately 150 Deaf students as supplementary education.
The School is one of a handful of organisations, including six NGOs and the Armenian Deaf Association, which Gregor has facilitated into a working group that has been exploring the education gaps and workforce barriers for DHH people. From this consultative process three policy briefs have been developed and Gregor has since been supporting policy dialogue with officials at the Ministry for High Technology, the Ministry of Education, and the Armenian parliament. The Fellowship also created opportunities for Gregor to connect more closely with local civil society actors and parliamentarians and to present several legislative initiatives highlighting the linguistic rights of Deaf Armenians
Gregor remarks that his efforts to bring together different stakeholders to focus on win-win policy solutions have been very pleasing, but the highlight of the Fellowship has probably been “seeing the smiles on the faces of the students receiving certificates after they had completed the courses aided by our new educational videos. It was clearly a rare moment for them to feel recognition of their educational achievements”.
The Fellowship also helped Gregor understand that, if he wanted to move from individual projects towards long-term policy change, he needed to develop his own knowledge and education in public policy. During the Fellowship he applied for and was awarded a Chevening Scholarship, which supported him to study for an MA in Social and Public Policy at the University of York in the UK. This has been another major step in Gregor’s move into advocating for the Deaf community and developing his capacity to engage with government and policy-making processes.
Already during his time in the UK, the Fellowship enabled Gregor to launch collaboration with the Armenian Institute London, including participation of a board member in the Fellowship project’s closing event. This led to the creation of an international workshop and public awareness event on Armenian Sign Language and Deaf culture in the UK: “Armenian Sign Language: A Hidden Culture”.
In the coming years Gregor wants to do whatever he can to win the legal recognition of Armenian Sign Language and to provide leadership for the coalition of organisations. He is currently working with the Language Committee of Armenia under the Ministry of Education to advance legislation that would give Armenian Sign Language national legal recognition and strengthen the protection of the linguistic and cultural rights of Deaf Armenians. He has found that his background in the marketing and creative industries, his personal experience of growing up in a Deaf household, and his developing education in public policy are strong drivers for achieving positive and sustainable social change.
Find other Featured Stories of our EaP Civil Society Fellows here.
Background information:
Gregor Avetisyan is one of the Fellows of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Fellowship programme funded by the European Union. Its main objective is to support civil society activists or civically minded people from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine who demonstrate a deep commitment to leading positive social change in their communities. The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Fellowship programme has been running since 2017 and today the Fellowship alumni has over 250 Fellows from across the six countries of the Eastern Partnership. Details about the Fellows and their Fellowship projects can be found here.
