After over 75 years NEF returned to Armenia in April and June 2004 to a country where 48 percent of Armenians live below the poverty line and many families are not able to adequately care for their children. Although Armenia had been the "Silicon Valley" of the Soviet Union, when the Soviet system collapsed and Armenia became independent, markets dried up. Adding further economic burdens, the country is blockaded on two sides by Azerbaijan and Turkey, and in 1988 suffered a devastating earthquake from which it has not fully recovered.

NEF worked with professionals in children's social service and development assistance as well as major figures in religion, government and art, to help so-called "street kids" improve their lives and the lives of their families. Partnering with Canada-based Street Kids International, the aim was to tap into their evident assets--"street smarts," ambition, responsibility, entrepreneurial skills; and communicate the dangers surrounding issues like drugs, sex and AIDS. We are currently exploring new community development opportunities in Armenia--the people NEF was founded to help in urgent response to the Armenia genocide and deportations over 90 years ago.

It was September 1915 when the forced flight of Armenians from Turkey into adjacent countries first came to the attention of the United States. An emergency committee of representatives of American Near East organizations responded, raising $100,000 of immediate assistance, forwarding the funds to Constantinople. By November 1915 the committee had launched a national publicity campaign and with expanding operations, was formally incorporated as Near East Relief in 1919 by a special act of Congress. We continued to work with Armenian survivors of the 1915 Genocide until our expulsion from the country by the Soviets in 1927.

From its inception until 1930, Near East Relief administered $117,000,000 and is credited with saving a million lives and making possible productive futures for 132,000 Armenian orphan children. Very early in the relief effort, attention focused on helping these rescued orphans to become self-supporting and contributing members of the communities that had absorbed then.

Both in Near East Relief orphanages providing shelter and child welfare services, and in foster care homes under Near East Relief auspices, attention shifted to teaching agricultural and industrial skills, primarily at demonstration centers. A generation of poultry raisers, dairymen, mechanics, shipbuilders, cabinet makers, masons, shoemakers, tailors and nurses grew up and moved out into their new worlds in Syria, Greece, the Caucasus and Persia. NEF continued to maintain orphanages in Armenia until expelled by the Soviets in 1927.