“The district militia officer of ours, God bless him, he brought us here saying ‘Do something if you can.’ So did I. There was a huge pile of garbage here, a pesthole for cholera. So all of us together with my children, we worked and brought the place to an order. We bought this little shelter and brought it here,” says Anush Manukyan, a resident of the Shengavit community in Yerevan, who lives with her three children – a son and two daughters, and her daughters’ three children.

“I used to collect empty bottles, sell liquid bleach. I somehow managed to buy this [temporary house] and gathered my children under one roof,” Anush recalls.

This 48-year-old woman, who shoulders the burden of her family bought the shelter eight years ago. The family cleaned the piece of land by hand, taking away garbage and stones. Modest as it is, it is an improvement over their previous “residence” – in a cemetery in Karmir Blur (near Yerevan).