Mental Health and Psycho-social Support Implementation: Coordinating over 200 mentors, research partners, and international standards required exceptional regulatory fluency and adaptive project management. Emergency Response Delivery: Integrating 854 forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh( Artsakh) students into 20 schools surfaced urgent learning gaps. Over 100 children were unable to read or write at grade level, emphasizing the depth of need for remedial support. Preschool Adaptation: Launching the Seroond Kindergarten Program required new frameworks to meet early learning needs and adapt Change-Based Learning( CBL) to younger children. Alumni Retention: While 70 % of our alumni remain in the education sector, only 50 % continue actively teaching. Sustaining long-term engagement in the classroom remains a challenge— not solely due to challenges of living in a rural community, but also because of low salaries, limited infrastructure, and a lack of professional growth opportunities. Addressing these systemic barriers is critical to retaining passionate educators where they’ re needed most. Institutionalizing Policy Work: Mobilizing support across policy actors for performance-based funding and alternative teacher pathways progressed more slowly than expected, requiring sustained investment not only in the primary partner— the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports— but also in other key government bodies such as the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, and the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure.

Above all, 2024 reminded us that real change happens when those closest to the challenges lead, with trust, tools, and support.

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