AVC Multimedia e-Book Series e-Book#3: AGBU 100 Years of History (Vol. I) | Page 27

In 1912, the AGBU granted a subsidies totaling 1,435 E.P. to its thirty-four elementary schools, which were run by Miatsyal (thirty schools) and Azkanver (four schools). It also allocated 1,389 E.P. to other Armenian Ottoman schools, over and above the assistance it provided farmers in the form of equipment, seed, and animals, and the medical aid it distributed in Cilicia in the form of vaccines and medicine. This program was renewed in 1913, with significant increases in the budgets for each sector. Exceptionally, assistance was also extended to the Armenians of Malgara, who had been the victims of local massacres during the Balkan Wars. Among the main donors at this time were Dikran Chamkerten, the president of the Antwerp chapter, and, in London, Calouste Gulbenkian. Let us note, finally, that the AGBU received its first bequests in 1913 and was named the beneficiary of several life insurance policies. The most symbolically significant of its achievements was the completion of the teacher-training institute in Van, inaugurated on 24 November 1913. By early 1914, it had founded thirty-eight primary schools, twenty-seven of them in Ottoman Armenia and eleven in Cilicia. The most recent was the school opened in the village of Kheybian on the plain of Mush; its construction had been financed by Evsepos Benlian, the president of the London chapter. At this time, the Union counted one hundred forty-two local boards representing 8,533 members. Read all

The AGBU and the Reforms in Asiatic Turkey, 1912-1914

Ceremony organized in Cairo on 30 April 1911 to mark the fifth

anniversary of the foundation of the AGBU

(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).