Supporting refugees in Azerbaijan, one chicken at a time

Aurélia Crémoux
Special collaboration November 2, 2024

Photo: Aurélia Crémoux The founder of Transparent Armenia Charitable Foundation, Haïk Kazarian, and Raffi Elliott organized “all you can eat poutine” fundraisers.

This text is part of the special edition International Solidarity

Canadian-Armenian Haik Kazarian founded his own NGO to help victims of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

When the second Nagorno-Karabakh war broke out in 2020, Canadian-Armenian Haik Kazarian had been living in Armenia for two years. “I went to the police station to introduce myself as a volunteer [soldier],” he says. “When I told them I had never fired a weapon, [the officers] laughed at me.”

It was they who advised him to raise funds for refugee families instead. He grew up in Montreal. He still has many contacts in Canada.

Mr. Kazarian chose to post on Facebook. He explained to those around him the situation of refugees there and the goal of his approach. His international community mobilized, and the first donation he received came from “a childhood friend with whom [he went] to school [in Montreal].” He then created his own non-governmental organization (NGO): Transparent Armenia Charitable Foundation. And, so that his Canadian donors could receive tax credits, he linked it to Atken Armenian Foundation, an NGO based in Laval whose mission is to support the economic and cultural development of Armenia. “People appreciated this system for its transparency,” he confided.

Focusing on sustainable aid

There, he first got help from Raffi Elliott. A Canadian-Armenian like him, he met him during his studies in Ottawa and he has lived in Yerevan for over ten years. Together, they organized “all you can eat poutine” evenings, which allowed them to raise over $3,000. They later opened Poutinerie Erevan, a restaurant serving the Quebec specialty, but which unfortunately had to close last July.

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At the same time, Nuri Kino, a Swedish journalist of Assyrian origin, contacted him. The latter founded the NGO A Demand For Action (ADFA), a non-profit organization that helps victims of natural disasters and war refugees, among others.

“Nuri Kino called me to tell me that they were going to provide us with $30,000 worth of equipment, which we then distributed to the refugees,” explains Haik Kazarian.

The following year, his NGO received 22 tons of clothing, again from ADFA. A donation that allowed it to help approximately 45,000 people.

“Because it was during COVID, the distribution was [chaotic], though,” he says. “Families had only a few minutes to choose the clothes, and sometimes people would argue.”

As Kazarian’s work grew, he gained more notoriety, and several sponsors joined him. These larger donations allowed him to build sustainable support for refugee families in Armenia.

“So we started the Homestead project,” explains the Canadian-Armenian. “We bought two small sows and gave them to a family that had the space and the knowledge to take care of them.” She was also given a grant to perform artificial insemination and for their animals to reproduce. The agreement stipulates that the family will give them four sows a year later, so that they can be redistributed to other families in the village. Overall, the contract was respected, but there were times when some villagers killed the pigs for food, says Haik Kazarian.

From pigs to chickens

A year ago, in September 2023, a new offensive by Azerbaijan took place and nearly 100,000 new refugees fled Nagorno-Karabakh to settle in Armenia. Mr. Kazarian and his team then decided to relaunch the project, but this time with poultry.

“In addition to meat, the chickens provide eggs. This is an advantage for the inhabitants,” he says. The contract stipulates that after one year, families must return three times the number of chickens they initially received […] and that they can keep the other chicks born during the year.”

The NGO then sells half of the returned poultry and distributes the other half to new families. And so on. And while a large proportion of the beneficiaries are refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, the program is open to others.

“We also work with Assyrian refugees and villagers who need help,” says the founder of the NGO. Since its inception, he says he has raised about $250,000, not including donations of equipment provided by ADFA, which he estimates to be worth between $400,000 and $600,000. He now hopes to raise nearly $6,000 to renovate a barn that will provide shelter for the poultry recovered from families this fall during the winter, before distributing them to about forty families next spring.

This report was produced thanks to a grant from the Fonds québécois en journalisme international.

This content was produced by the special publications team of Devoir, which falls under marketing. The editorial staff of Devoir did not take part.