The donations from Russian-Armenians to the Hayastan All Armenian Fund are unprecedented due to the fact that $15 million was generated within the framework of one fundraiser. The executive director of the Hayastan All Armenian Fund, Haykak Arshamyan, spoke about this in an interview with Aravot Daily.
When the fund posted what countries participated in the fundraiser, which generated $150 million from 73 different countries, there were some discussions on social media about how, for example, Russia is in third place. 45.3 percent of the donations were from the US, 33.3 percent were from Armenia, and 10.7 percent were from Russia. Of course, people expected there to be larger donations from Russia, especially taking into consideration the fact that there are 2.5 million Armenians in Russia.
Haykak Arshakyan said that there is a lot of participation from Russia’s Armenian communities, and it’s very common for people to gather, raise money, and send the money through one person. So, there may be tens of thousands of Armenians behind the money, and they are giving as much as they can. “The fund and the Motherland are grateful to all those who donated regardless of how much they donated,” Arshamyan said.
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He said that it is very common for representatives of local Armenian communities to visit their town’s or country’s Armenia Fund office, where they donate all the money gathered from their community. The director also gave another example: a DJ named Edgar Jan has a new fundraiser every day. He gathered approximately 35 million rubles from over 10,000 people. “So, what’s important here is not the amount of money because this is not a fundraiser from large charities. Instead, it is a national fundraiser, which is why we didn’t call it a fundraiser in the beginning; we’ve always called it a movement. And this is the most important part because this fundraiser will be strengthening the pan-Armenian network, and it is due to the network that we will truly become a global nation. Therefore, the blame and competition regarding who gave the most are inappropriate. People are doing what they can.”
Arshamyan also considers the amount donated from Armenia to be unprecedented. The amount was over $50 million.
He also spoke about the humanitarian aid that is coming from overseas, behind which there are thousands of Armenians.
Children also donate to the fund. Arshamyan explained that children often visit the office, where they open their piggy banks and give everything to the fundraiser. “Artists created websites where they sell their work and donate the money to the fund. Writers came from the Writers’ Union and said that they do not have money, but they can give us their gold. We did not accept it, of course. Another citizen brought the money needed for their surgery- 300,000 AMD- which we did not accept. We offered that they simply donate a symbolic 5,000 AMD. People understand that this is a fight for our survival, and everyone is helping as much as they can. Everyone wants to invest as much as possible.”
As of 4:30 PM Armenian time on October 28th, the total amount of money raised was $152,589,483.04.
Nelly Babayan
