For A Strong Family

For the Sake of Family The “For A Strong Family” program was implemented through Cross of Armenian Unity’s charitable cultural organization and PH International, through funding by the US State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Office of the U.S. Embassy’s project, “Community Connections and Initiatives For the Benefit of Legal Socialization”.
The project aims to improve the wellbeing of people in Echmiadzin and its surrounding communities, especially through effective communication between children and parents. The first phase of the project took place from January to May of 2015.

In this phase a group called “Family Support Council,” comprised of CAU’s program department employees, teachers, psychologists, and parents of students enrolled at the art school, passed a vocational training in “trainer skills”. This training taught council members about the characteristics and qualities of a good trainer, public speaking skills, and effective principles and methods for training others. The next phase involved trainings on child psychological development, stress management, age-appropriate child behavioral characteristics, the influence of parental attitudes in child development, issues with child adoption, the role of the father in the upbringing of a child, sexual education, parent-child dialogue, and issues arising from bad habits. The following phase of the program educated the trainers on the project beneficiaries, Echmiadzin and its surrounding communities, school teachers, and students’ parents. 190 of the beneficiaries attended the training from the communities of Argavand, Rainbow, Norakert, Gai, Musaler, Voskehat, Aknashen, Araks, Tairov, Paraqar, Aknalich, and Vagharshapad schools nos. 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 11.

Finally, the participants learned about group and individual counseling sessions, the psychological characteristics of a child’s age, the ages of crises and adjustments, fear and aggression and methods to overcome these issues, how to promote strong parent-child relationships, causes of stress and coping methods, methods of sexual education, and the child’s role within a family.


After completion of the program, free and confidential individual and group counseling services on parenting and strong parent-child relationships were offered on a volunteer basis for the residents of Echmiadzin and its surrounding communities.