The AGBU’s commitment to education goes back a long way; indeed, it has constituted, since the organization was created in Cairo in 1906, one of its founding principles. The Union’s earliest leaders were convinced that rais-ing the educational level of the Armenian population was the key to its socio-economic development. This explains their energetic investments in the network of schools that already existed in the Ottoman provinces, and, especially, their policy of opening new schools in remote, previously neglected parts of the Empire.
Obviously, the World War I destruction of the Ottoman Armenians and the Ar¬menian national heritage threw the progress achieved before the War into question. It forced the AGBU’s founders to set up much more extensive humanitarian programs, focused on providing aid to the refugees and recovering abandoned Armenian women and children. This work was premised on the idea that bringing the genocide survivors back together would create the basis for national rebirth.
In the first post-War years, AGBU activity in the field of education was limited to designing a curriculum for the many ... Read all
The AGBU’s Armenian School System