A LETTER FROM SAM & LARISA
Dear friends, supporters, and fellow nation-builders,
Sam Simonian Chairman
Over ten years ago, we started with a conviction and a question. The conviction: every child in Armenia deserves an education that matches their potential. The question: what would it take to make that real, not in theory, but in classrooms, in villages, in the lived experience of families across this country? Today, we can tell you what it took. It took 550 Teacher-Leaders and Alumni-Ambassadors who moved to communities they had never lived in and stayed long after their fellowships ended. It took principals who opened their doors to transformation. It took students who dared to lead change in their own villages. It took a government that chose partnership over resistance. And it took supporters, many of you reading this letter, who bet on a startup nonprofit in a small country because you believed, as we did, that education is sovereignty.
2025 was the year we stopped being a program and became a system.
Larisa Hovannisian Founder & CEO
We marked our tenth anniversary not with nostalgia, but with the boldest leap in our history: the transformation from Teach For Armenia into the Armenia Education Initiative. This is not just a name change. It is a declaration of ambition and scope. We are no longer only placing teachers.
We are building schools from the ground up. We are shaping national policy.
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