NEW YORK — Founded in 2005, the Society for Orphaned Armenian Relief (SOAR) is the only charitable organization whose singular mission is to provide humanitarian assistance to orphaned Armenians around the world. Today, SOAR provides humanitarian relief to orphaned Armenian children and orphaned adults with disabilities around the world. Through our in-country staff and trusted network of global volunteers, SOAR strives to provide this institutionalized population with the same educational and social opportunities as their non-institutionalized counterparts while simultaneously facilitating deinstitutionalization, family empowerment, and reunification.
Represented by 144 Chapters, 6 Junior groups, and more than 600 volunteers worldwide, SOAR supports 43 institutions – orphanages, special boarding schools, day centers, and orphan summer camps – in Armenia, Artsakh, Javakh, Lebanon, and Syria. In addition to SOAR’s institutional-based work, SOAR established the Services to Children in their Own Home (SCOH) Program. The SCOH Program works with residential institutions to deinstitutionalize and reunify children with biological families and provides home-based services after reunification to reduce the economic, social, emotional, and professional barriers within the family dynamic that may trigger reinstitutionalization.
SOAR prides itself on collaboration, creativity, cross-cultural respect, fiscal responsibility, and transparency. In 2006, distributions totaled approximately $60,000. Since 2015, SOAR has exceeded $1M distributions annually. SOAR’s efforts not only address the major humanitarian constructs of education, emotional and psychological support, nutrition, health and hygiene, dental and vision care, and fundamental human rights, but our academic Programs offer curricula on a multitude of topics that stimulate intellectual curiosity, empowerment, and enrichment.
For several of us, SOAR is our life’s work, and we are blessed with a selfless cadre of supporters who share our short-term aspirations and long-term vision. We are faced with an enormous responsibility. Our greatest trepidation is not inadequacy or a belief that we are ill-equipped to assist the orphaned children we have embraced as our own, but rather that we have influence and power beyond measure. Our daily routine involves a compulsive desire to assist the abandoned, the sick, the impoverished, and the abused. As SOAR’s light shines, we hope that we are unconsciously giving our orphaned population the will to do the same.
Please join us for our 15th anniversary “Crimson and Crystal Celebration” on March 28, 2020, at the Springfield Country Club in Springfield, PA. Musical entertainment will be provided by Lucy Yeghiazaryan’s Jazz Quartet and Elie Berberyan and Band. Event proceeds are earmarked for the Armenian Evangelical Boarding School (AEBS) in Ainjar, Lebanon; Kharberd Orphanage in Yerevan, Armenia; and the Our Lady of Armenia Center in Gyumri, Armenia. If you have any questions about our milestone gala, please contact George S. Yacoubian, Jr., at 610.213.3452 or [email protected].
The Society for Orphaned Armenian Relief
1 comment
Yes, lets all play the “Orphaned Armenian Relief” by SOAR’s standards of keeping Armenian children in Orphanages and not having sustainable programs to support families trying to stay together. Its only fair to mention this president of SOAR started a private law practice that specializes in adoption of Armenian Children and has a North Carolina chapter headed by notorious Adoption Agency owner Robin Sizemore that has been caught up in many scandals in Armenia. Nice crisis marketing at a time when Armenian Adoptions and orphanages are being shuttered. What is the plan to sustain families so their children are no longer bought and sold or carted off to an orphanage just to have food, shelter, education and clothing?
Just spit in the faces of fellow Armenians …oh that is right your funding largely comes from non-Armenians. Armenian groups already have their orphan support and relief, and we know that the money is going to worthwhile projects to support families not adoption mills.