From July 11 to 21, 2016, twenty six young boy and girl activists from the Youth Department of the Armenian Diocese in Georgia (Director, Valery Badalyan), under the leadership of Suren Abramyan, Choreographer of the Taron Dance Group of the Hayartun Center, spent their summer vacation in the scout camp, located near the Lermontov village in the Lori region in Armenia. 150 boy and girl scouts from the USA, Iran, Iraq, Dubai and Georgia participated in the scout camp organized within the framework of the AGBU youth projects. The scout camp was launched on July 13. At the opening ceremony of the Antranik Scout Camp the Primate of the Diocese of Gougark of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church, His Grace Archbishop Sebouh Chouldjian blessed the young people.

The Antranik Scout Camp offers young boys and girls from Diaspora a wonderful opportunity to interact with their peers in Armenia, to overcome challenges together, to sit by a bonfire and share their impressions at the end of the day. The scout camp is interesting and fun: a day usually started with morning exercises and the flag-raising ceremony, followed by breakfast, cleaning of tents and area, hiking, lectures, games. In the evenings, they had dinner, performed songs and dances around a bonfire and raised the flag again.

For the past years, young Armenians of Tbilisi have been participating in the scout camps with pleasure and preferred to spend their summer vacation in the valley. For Ani and Armine Ghushchyan, Milena Galustova, Sergey Kamalov, Eduard Gharagyozyan and Lidia Abrahamyan, the camping event served as a great opportunity for the friends to meet again and have fun in the thick forest.

The camp’s director Raymond Harutyunyan praised the young Georgian-Armenians for their active participation, and Armine Ghushchyan and Eduard Gharagyozyan became the exemplary scouts of the team in Tbilisi this year.

During their days in Armenia, the campers visited Khor Virap Monastery, the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Sevanavank Monastery, Haghartsin Monastery, Haghpat Monastery, Sanahin Monastery and Yerevan where they paid visits to TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial and the Armenian youth center.

The scouts bid each other farewell with the hope of seeing each other again next year.