Armenia Fund U.S. Western Region Chairman Ara Aghishian and Executive Director Sarkis Kotanjian were on Horizon TV last Friday talking about the newly launched Text-to-Donate campaign, which lets Armenia Fund supporters donate $10 by texting “ARMENIA” to 50555.
Aghishian and Kotanjian explained the very simple logistics of the campaign and its potential to raise $100,000 if every Armenian in the United States sends one text donation.
They also spoke about the upcoming First Annual Armenia Fund Benefit Concert on November 21 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium and how the performing artists are donating all proceeds of the concert to the Water is Life Telethon.
The concert will feature: Eva Rivas, Andre, Sofi Mkheyan, Razmik Amyan as well as six students of the Armenian State Theater of Song, representing different regions of Armenia. The lineup will perform at the First Annual Armenia Fund Benefit Concert.
They highlighted that this year’s telethon will focus solely on rallying the worldwide Armenian communities to raise the funds needed to develop Artsakh’s inadequate water systems. Kotanjian and Aghishian underscored the vital need for the project by describing the hundreds of untapped reservoirs scattered throughout Karabakh’s mountainous landscape that have hundreds of years worth of water supplies that are inaccessible and out of reach.
To secure the future of Artsakh, they stressed it is absolutely necessary to build irrigation channels, water pipelines, and purification systems that connect Artsakh’s wells and reservoirs to its villages and people in desperate need of clean drinking water.
This past summer, Armenia Fund completed such a project in the village of Sos, bringing water pipelines, distribution networks and purification systems to villagers that had previously been forced to trek long distances every day to gather the water for their community.