Steps to Sustainable Future, Armenia

Project name: Steps to Sustainable Future

Project location: Gyumri, Armenia

Website: http://norluyce.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/norluyce/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/norluyce/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/norluyce

Project description:

Nor Luyce Mentoring Center for Youth NGO is the first mentoring organization in Gyumri, Armenia that works with teenage girls from orphanages and families from low socioeconomic status. Nor Luyce provides these girls with one-on-one mentoring relationship, career planning skills and scholarships to pursue a college degree.
Nor Luyce has conducted mentoring program and career planning training for teenage girls from orphanages and from families of low socioeconomic status for already five years. During those five years Nor Luyce has helped about 100 girls to receive mentoring relationship and 80 girls to build their career plans.
With this project Nor Luyce is going to continue its work and recruit 20 new teenage girls from orphanages and from families of low socioeconomic status to involve them in mentoring relationships, and increase the number of mentees from 40 to 60. Nor Luyce will continue to provide 20 more teenage girls with an opportunity to reveal their assets, skills and abilities, to understand what they are interested mostly in, and build their career plans. All those activities will bring a life-long change in mentees’ life. The former mentees who have already prepared their career plans will be able to share their career plans and guide each mentee in the process of creating their plans. This will provide the new mentees with an opportunity to enlarge their network.

Goal and purpose of the project:

1. By the beginning of September 2017 Nor Luyce will have recruited 20 new mentees from orphanages and families of low socioeconomic status.
2. By the end of September 2017 Nor Luyce will have recruited and trained 20 new mentors providing them with the necessary mentoring skills to be able to conduct a better mentoring work.
3. By the beginning of October 2017 Nor Luyce will have start realizing 40 individual meetings throughout the year that will help the mentees to reveal their personalities, overcome their fears, manage their behavior and stabilize their emotional level.
4. By the beginning of October 2017 Nor Luyce will have start realizing 10 mentoring group meetings through the year that will help the mentees to obtain necessary skills for setting short-term and long-term goals, make their dreams into goals and achieve them.
5. By the beginning of September 2017 Nor Luyce will have launched Career planning training made of 18-20 training sessions for 19 mentees from orphanages and families of low socioeconomic status.
6. By the end of October 2017 Nor Luyce will have organized at least 4 group meetings that will help the mentees to reveal their skills, assets, abilities, and interests.
7. By the end of November 2017 Nor Luyce will have organized at least 2 meetings with different professors from 2 different universities for the mentees to learn about available disciplines, the degree they will gain and receive answers to any questions they may have.
8. By the end of December 2017 Nor Luyce will have organized a meeting with the Director of State Employment Agency of Gyumri for the mentees to learn about available jobs in the city and how to use the services of the agency in the future.
9. By the end of December 2017 Nor Luyce will have organized a meeting with different employees and workers, for the mentees to understand the work life and the use of knowledge gained in the university at the job site.
10. By the beginning of February 2017 Nor Luyce will have provided the mentees with one-on-one guidance on career plan writing.
11. By the end of April 2017, the mentees will have finalized their career plans.
12. By the end of May 2018 Nor Luyce mentees will have started to present their career plans to other members of the organization.
13. By the mid of June 2018 Nor Luyce will have provided the mentees with a certificate of completion of their career plans.

Motivation of the applicant / applicant team:

In the real life of Gyumri young people from orphanages and from families of low socioeconomic status face a hard time developing their future career plans. They lack people in their lives who will be able to guide or mentor them to build their careers. In some cases, these young people turn to get help from school teachers or orphanage caregivers, however not all of them can receive one-on-one guidance. As a result, they face difficulties to stabilize their emotional level, manage their behavior, explore different careers, reveal their skills and abilities, realize what they are interested in and accordingly, they are not sure how to build their own career plans. Whereas, career planning is an ongoing process of thinking about one’s own interests, values, skills, and preferences. It is a process of exploring life, work and learning options available.
Nor Luyce has seen its impact throughout these 5 years and we are aimed to continue to make a difference in a life of a teenage girl because we believe that all the girls have the potential to become self-sufficient and successful young women.

Use of prize money:

The money will be used to conduct three phases of the program, enlarge the program and involve more teenage girls, cover program expenses, recruitment and administrative costs, staff payment, transportation cost, cost for snacks for the girls when they come after school to take part in the meetings, and costs of PR of the program.