What convinced me in 2018 to invest my time, money, and energy in Kalavan was the public media narrative being pushed by local politicians that it was a place intent on rapid cultural and economic development. That idea aligned closely with the values I'd been honing from my experiences traveling around the developing world since I was a...
There's an old 80s sitcom in America called Cheers. None of my Armenian friends seem to know it. It's set in a bar where a bunch of friends meet every episode, kind of like Central Perk from Friends. It has a very famous opening theme song, the chorus of which goes repeats the motif of going where...
Recently, we commissioned a new logo for the Kalavan Retreat Center. It includes a motif of mountains representing Mt. Ararat and Armenia's recognizable landscape and also a funny little squiggly doodle with a flower at the top.
Since winter, we've had about 30 international volunteers and guests stay at The Kalavan Retreat Center. Some were only here a few days, and others a few months. Some left and came back. Others are already planning return trips from abroad. As a result, we are currently constructing new accommodation in the form of an attached studio apartment...
In this candid interview, I share some of the motivations behind The Kalavan Retreat Center and what I have learned about cultural inhibitions in Armenia from the five years I've lived here.
Perhaps the most powerful motivator across all of Armenian society is fear of social ostracism. Here, nearly every individual perceives themselves as vulnerable if they lack the support of the collective.
In the last few months, I've had ample opportunity to refine the purpose of my experiment in societal development that began when I purchased my house in Kalavan village five years ago. I saw so much opportunity then among a small group of Armenian villagers who invited me to live with them and portrayed themselves as sharing the same core...
More than 100,000 Armenians have fled Artsakh into Armenia proper in the last weeks, fearing ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijan. It is doubtful they will return to their homes since the Nagorno-Karabakh territory will be fully signed over to Azerbaijan on January 1, 2024. That means there are now 100,000 people who need housing, food, utilities, and...
Recently, I was publicly accused in a News.am article of having "serious problems with integration" in Kalavan due to my "difficult personality." This was part of a denial about a claim I had made about having sent this man $500 at his request upon buying my house here so that he could send workers to install plumbing and...
