For the past eight years the School for Young Leaders in Kapan has encouraged teenagers to develop leadership skills. The organizer of the school is the Kapan Women’s Regional Association NGO.

School Director Susanna Martirosyan says that the idea of having such a school was prompted by the Republican Women’s Council. During one of the conferences in Kapan, Council Chairwoman Nora Hakobyan noted that only gray-haired women were attending and there were no representatives of the new generation. And when they started to think about preparing young people in the public sector to come to replace them, they decided on having such a school.

Every year it operated due to assistance from various donors (international organizations), every time presenting the program, the school’s director was searching for funding. In summer 2008, for the second consecutive year, the program has been funded by the Yerevan Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The school of leaders will operate for five weeks. (In the last seven years 200 teenagers graduated from the School for Young Leaders).

Participants are selected according to a special test system. Based on children’s answers they reveal those with originality and leadership skills. There are many who want to enter, but opportunities are limited.

This year, 25 teenagers are studying at the school. It has become a tradition that pupils from the previous year who volunteer to help the organizers work here. Six volunteers work at the school this year.

Hasmik Grigoryan, 15, says that the school helped her develop leadership skills. “That is, I can guide, I learned forms of management. I was very restrained in the past, now I think more freely. And this year I have come here as a volunteer to learn to work.”

“Different children come here,” says the director. “Some children are very active, others wait as to see what they will get here. They gradually change in the process. Our objective is for the teenager to have positive changes.”

Leadership and efficient management are taught at this school. In the process of learning there are lectures and practical trainings.

“We prepare an active citizen, an active member of society with an independent way of thinking,” she says.

Kristine Grigoryan, 14, learned from her classmates that there was such a school: “And I also wanted to enter it. Here I learn what a leader should be. And I feel I am a leader in my class, school, in my surroundings. I hope that this school will give me new knowledge and after graduating I will be able to provide better management using new forms.”

The children also visit the municipality, the regional governor’s office, other organizations, get acquainted with their work. They receive knowledge that secondary school does not provide.

“Experience shows that in the future they are active in their surroundings – if they study at higher schools, they get involved in student councils, they also play active roles in work environments, many currently work at nongovernmental organizations,” the director says.

More active children organize actions themselves. For example, last year one of the school charges pasted an announcement in their yards and in neighboring yards and organized yard cleaning.

“In its first year, we meant the school for leaders only for girls, but later we saw that boys should also be there. We also speak about gender issues, discuss gender equality in different sectors of public life. And it turns out that we teach girls but there also should be boys so that such issues are also discussed with them and they, too, know about equal rights,” says Martirosyan.