SunChild: Armenia's First Regional Environmental Festival!

SunChild is organized by Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets and Golden Apricot Fund for Cinema Development and will take place between April 1-15 of 2007, in Dilijan, Armenia. Here are some more details:

The aim of the festival is to create a background with suitable conditions for bringing up a healthy and strong generation, taking care for the nature of their own country as well as of neighboring countries and protecting the assets and treasures that were created by mankind throughout thousands of years. In this sense, the festival provides wide opportunities for cross-cultural communication and dialogue.

One of the most important goals of our festival is to develop within the new generation the love, care and understanding towards the nature surrounding them. Our children will inherit this planet, and it is not only important in what condition they inherit it, but even more, whether they will be prepared to live in harmony with nature, to preserve and care for its beauty.

Armenian Film programs from the festival will be screened at different International Environmental festivals worldwide.

Armenia's hippies, unite!

Source: SunChild Festival

Oligarchs May Buy National Parks

Historical buildings? Check. Politicians? Check. Votes? Check. National parks? Erm, check!

It is not excluded that the Armenian oligarchs privatize Sevan and Dilijan national parts. “In fact, the new law does not prohibit that. At the moment, the parks are managed by non commercial state enterprises,” Simon Papyan, first deputy minister of nature protection told reporters.

In the words of the deputy minister, 50 percent of the credit program of this year in the amount of $800,000 will be directed to these parks to implement reforms. The state will release another 156 million Armenian drams to Sevan national park and 75 million to Dilijan national park for protection purposes.

Who is taking bets as to when the buying and selling of people by oligarchs becomes a reality? Oh, wait.

In case you were wondering, that beautiful man in the picture is Armenia Blog's best friend Gagik "Dodi Gago" Tsarukian.

Source: Panorama