Metal container that Armenian family called home for 30-plus years gets new purpose

(Photo: Viva-MTS General Manager Ralph Yirikian, Tamara Yedigaryan and Fuller Center Armenia President Ashot Yeghiazaryan.)

After a devastating earthquake rocked Armenia in 1988, the Soviet Union rushed in to supply the then-Soviet republic with temporary shelters known as domiks, repurposed metal shipping containers.

But, like many shelters that are meant to be temporary in the wake of a disaster, they became all too permanent. The Soviet Union soon collapsed, but the domiks remained. Helping the thousands of families still living in these containers more than three decades later has been one of the primary focuses of The Fuller Center for Housing of Armenia and its partners — including an active diaspora in America that gives of its time and money to help the homeland and in-country partners like Viva-MTS.

Recently, Viva-MTS and The Fuller Center dedicated a beautiful new home for the Yedigaryan family in Gyumri. The family matriarch, Tamara, lost one of her three sons in the 1988 earthquake and lost another to the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

For more than 30 years, the Yedigaryans struggled to make a life in domik, but now that metal container has a new life for which it is better suited — a warehouse for the family’s farming needs. See the Yedigaryans’ complete story at the link below from the Aysor Armenian news service.

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