At the beginning of April, the Tinusaur team visited educational institutions and organizations in Yerevan, Armenia, to strengthen existing relationships and create new partnerships. The meetings took place thanks to the Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria in Armenia, and especially Ambassador Kalin Anastasov and his team.
We visited 131 “Peyo Yavorov” school in Yerevan, where we were welcomed by the director Naira Zakaryan and her team, and the students presented to us projects developed by them. The meeting took place in the innovative STEM space created as part of UATE‘s Armath initiative. We were given the opportunity to share our achievements in the field of STEM, the products and teaching methods we have developed, our work with Bulgarian schools, as well as the possibility of working together in the future with schools in Armenia.
We also visited the school museum of Peyo Yavorov.
It was a great privilege for us to meet personally with Hayk Chobanyan – one of the founders of UATE and former Minister of High-Tech Industry of the Republic of Armenia. He and his team at UATE managed to create STEM spaces in over 600 Armenian schools in just a few years with the exceptional support of private businesses. At the meeting, we discussed the possibilities of Bulgarian companies borrowing Armenian experience, as well as the prospects for joint work in the field of education.
UATE (Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises) was established in 2000 as a business association representing the collective interests of companies in the IT, ICT, and high-tech fields in Armenia. One of the organization’s initiatives is Armath, which teaches children from age 10 how exciting and fun learning science through STEM can be.
In our meeting with Sarkis Karapetyan – Executive Director of UATE, and his team responsible for Armath and STEM, we discussed the possibilities of working together and testing our products and learning content in their environment, as well as what we can learn from the experience of our Armenian colleagues.
To date, Armath has established 630 engineering laboratories operating in Armenia, Artsakh, Georgia, Kuwait, France, USA, Bangladesh, Eswatini, and India. About 17,000 students have received engineering knowledge and skills.
At the meeting organized in the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia, we met with the minister’s team, which works in the field of STEM and, in particular, the implementation of new products and technologies in Armenian schools. We started a concrete initiative – creating a concept of how to test Tinusaur STEM products in 5 to 10 Armenian schools, followed by an evaluation by experts of the Ministry to make the correct decision for future cooperation.
Although the working languages of most meetings were English or Russian, the Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria assisted us with a specialist who also spoke Armenian, which made the conversations and discussions even more fruitful.
One of our most impressive visits was to the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies. It is a one-of-a-kind free education program for teenagers aged 12 to 18, specializing in technology and design, with training provided at centers in Yerevan and other cities. TUMO centers have also been established outside Armenia: in Paris, Beirut, Moscow, Tirana, Berlin, Lyon, Zurich, and Kyiv.
TUMO is a non-profit organization founded by Sam and Silva Simonian, with funding provided entirely through their Simonian Educational Foundation. Sam Simonyan is an Armenian-American entrepreneur known for his telecommunications company Inet Technologies.
One of our most interesting meetings was with Shamam Gevorgyan and Avag Sayan – founders of the Antrohoos Foundation, which organizes one of the largest competitions for students in the field of IT/ICT. Their organization’s mission is to develop educational resources and their application in education and place Armenia among the leading countries exporting innovative educational products and services. Shamam and Avag were the core of the UATE team that created Armath and are already working on their next venture – Antrohoos, which is also the basis for our future partnership.
Armenia has a thousand-year history and a fate similar to that of Bulgaria in many respects. This creates prerequisites for very good relations between the people of our two countries and for joint work in the field of education – something so important for the development of our economies.