In early April, a Visionest team led by Anu-Mall Naarits, the CEO of Visionest Institute, and Krista Kulderknup, the Project Manager for International Cooperation, visited Yerevan, Armenia as part of the ESTDEV mission. The visit aimed to restart Estonian Development Cooperation with Armenia, and as part of this, the Armenian-Estonian Civil Society Roundtable event was held in Yerevan. The event provided an opportunity for 10 Estonian NGOs to get to know Armenia better and meet with 21 Armenian NGOs. The main goal of the event was to create contacts and connections between the Civil Societies of both countries, to foster effective cooperation projects.
In Armenia, our team met with Alina Yeghiazaryan, a representative of Enterprise Armenia, who focused on attracting investments. In addition, information was exchanged with Diana Sarumova, Executive Director of the European Business Association (EBA) in Armenia, who represents exporting companies as one of the country’s organisations.
In Armenia, a lot of attention is paid to IT learning. Similarly to the Estonian study program kood/Jõhvi, the Armenian Code Academy has been operating very successfully in Yerevan for the seventh year already, the representative of which also shared the experience of their Academy. There would be many points of contact here!
During visit to Armenia, we were lucky to take part in the 23rd international trade fair Education & Career EXPO 2024. The fair was intended to introduce vocational schools, universities and private universities and other educational institutions to young people planning to continue their education. In the educational landscape of the region, in addition to local higher education institutions, universities in Lithuania, the USA and Russia introduced themselves. Great attention was paid to military fields of study. To illustrate education and learning opportunities, you could see a number of different drones, as well as military equipment.
At the fair we are meeting with a training company of a similar profile to the Visionest Institute from Yerevan – Business Development Group and one of the companies of interest to us, which managed companies interested in export, providing a platform with info-market.am environment.
Within the framework of international cooperation, Armenia and Estonia obviously have several areas that could be studied and developed jointly both at the national level and more narrowly, i.e. within different organizations.
This visit was the first mapping of the field in Armenia to get a better overview of the possible places of cooperation that the Visionest Institute could share through its experience and competence and which areas could be supported and proposed in the landscape of continuing education.
Thank you very much for organizing and conducting this event! Special thanks go to the Estonian Ambassador to Georgia and Armenia Riina Kaljuranna, who with her entire team contributes to the establishment of transnational relations and the finding and development of cooperation opportunities.