Safe Ride

Located in Martuni, the Voskeporik Development Center serves roughly 450 socially vulnerable children with special needs from 17 surrounding villages. The center lacked an accessible vehicle to transport the children. With your support, we helped them buy one!

According to UNICEF’s 2012 Report, “It’s about Inclusion,” 21% of children with disabilities do not attend school in Armenia’s Gegharkunik Province. Martuni is one of the largest cities in this region, and is surrounded by 17 villages. There are 307 registered children with disabilities in the Martuni area. Unofficially, there are about double that amount of children in this region with disabilities that have never been diagnosed.

Voskeporik Development Center was established in 2017 and aims to educate and develop artistic skills in children. However, a short time later, the Voskeporik team discovered that there were a huge number of children with special needs in this region who had no access to rehabilitation and physiotherapy treatments. 

Since 2018, Voskeporik has operated as a children’s rehabilitation center and now has 450 beneficiaries. Moreover, the center recently received the state qualification as an ambulatory pediatric rehabilitation center from Armenia’s Ministry of Health, which means they now have the capacity to accept more beneficiaries.

Besides kids’ initial basic and intensive therapies, Voskeporik also trains the children’s parents so they can execute their children’s therapies on their own under the supervision of specialists. This unique approach encourages parents to be fully involved in their child’s treatment, to team up with their children and the specialists, and evaluate every little step.