All For Armenia Rushes to Goris, Kornidzor to Aid Fleeing Refugees

Bakunc said, “All For Armenia is practically the only [NGO] organization, aside from the Red Cross, on the ground there.” The reason, she suggested, is that the grassroots organization has been focused on the region since 2020 and has a built-in local network, compared to the bigger organizations such as World Vision, the World Food Program and UNICEF, which are new to the site.

She added that the All for Armenia tents are located outside the building where the refugees do their registration upon arrival.

Bakunc noted, “Nearly all families stop at our tents at some point, tea, coffee, baby formula, diapers and hygiene products. There is a ton of traffic at our tents.”

“We have sandwiches in bags up to the ceiling and sweets and chocolates. The kids are loving the sweets because they haven’t had them since the blockade,” Astarjian said.

“The people arrive super hungry,” Astarjian said. “Some have been on the road for 40 hours, with no food or water.”

Kornidzor is dear to Bakunc, because that is where her husband is from and that is where they met.

“We became close to the people of Kornidzor village, which is the first village on the Lachin Corridor,” Bakunc said, “right at the gates of Artsakh.”

There, the organization has renovated KorniTun, a community center, adding a second floor and putting in a guest house and classrooms for students, Bakunc added.

She further explained that Kornidzor is a village outside Goris, which is the largest city in the area, though not a large city by any means, with a population of 20,000.

“We immediately kicked into action,” she said, with the rooms in KorniTun used to house volunteers helping with the efforts.

Bakunc said she was “blown away” by the response in terms of donations and volunteers. More than 20 volunteers with the organization have participated in the efforts in Goris and Kornidzor.

When asked how she coped with seeing the desperation, she said, “I felt really paralyzed when I was in Yerevan. The finality of it all is truly heartbreaking. It’s done at once. How many people have died in the last 30 year? It is horrifying and devastatingly. All of us have failed.”

By contrast, she said, once she started planning her visit to Goris, and was “extremely overloaded,” she felt better as she was “constructively doing something.”

At this point the people are being sent to different places, Astarjian said, since with the immense numbers, they need to be distributed. “They were putting people on buses to Gyumri, which is very far from here,” she noted. About half the arrivals to date have some relations or family in Armenia with whom they can stay until they sort out a long-term plan, she added.

Part of that is because many had family members or friends who were visiting in Armenia in December, right before the blockade.

“There are a lot of cases like that, of people who couldn’t make it back,” Astarjian said.

The distance they were traveling from Artsakh to Armenia is not long, but it was the traffic jam on the bridge, where they were stuck, because of the sheer numbers of people attempting the distance.

Since All For Armenia has been working in the region for three years, it is easier for them to set up now.

Astarjian first came to Armenia with Birthright a couple of years ago and through them, got two internships, one at the NGO Path of Law and the second at her current office. The experience made her want to give back more to her homeland, she said.

And now, when they are seeing the very worst things, she said, she has to motivate herself. “They need us to be strong and for us to stay as positive and as welcoming as we can,” she said. “They need to see that Armenian is happy to have them.”

Of course, the face she shows there must hide the pain she is experiencing. “I’m OK. It is very difficult to see. But in the moment, I think how can I help them. I really try to keep it together.”

Among the horrific things she has seen was a mother who was covered in dust and her baby, with cuts and blood on her face, munching on a chocolate bar. Astarjian said she did what came naturally, which was take a baby wipe and clean her face.

For both Astarjian and Bakunc, the impetus for moving to Armenia was the 2020 war. Seeing the horrors of that war caused her to want to move to Armenia. “Everybody is needed. We need more diasporan Armenians engaged in Armenia,” she said.

Astarjian said what American-Armenians can do to help from afar, aside from donations, is to “contact their elected officials so that their tax dollars don’t go to Azerbaijan.” She stressed that everything that the Armenian National Committee of America and the Armenian Assembly of America are doing should be supported in terms of advocacy.

“We are very lucky as Armenian-Americans to be able to do this. We have that opportunity as Americans,” she said, about pushing for legislations.

Another person directly involved with the effort who chooses to remain anonymous, interviewed on October 2, said he had arrived in Armenia from France on October 1 and was about to go to Goris the next day. He noted that the majority of the donations — 70 to 80 percent — is coming from individual donors in the US, more specifically in California. Basically, the organization has no overheads, as it has no offices and all the staff work as volunteers.

The source said that All For Armenia is composed of three legal entities based in the US, France and Armenia.

Since September 23, he explained, All For Armenia has spent about $9,000 a day in Goris and Kornidzor.

The source said that upon hearing the news about the mass uprooting of Artsakh, he did not want to allow himself to be emotional, and instead wanted to concentrate on the work he had to do. However, he said, a story making the rounds on social media finally caused him to break. A woman fleeing Artsakh said she had toyed with the idea of burning her house down, but did not have the heart to do so. Instead, she said she had washed all her dishes and straightened out her house, as if ready to receive a visitor.

“It really got me. This was the moment everything [emotional] came out,” he said.

Fundraising is ongoing through social media, especially the group’s Instagram page. The group operates independently, without a sponsor.

To learn more about All For Armenia or to donate, visit https://allforarmenia.org/.