Boo Alternative House
Nurturing Life Outside the Armenian Capital
by Arpine Galfayan
Is there life outside of the capital city? This is one of the questions young people in Armenia start asking themselves early in their school years. This question is, certainly, about study and work opportunities, but this is also about the possibilities of living an interesting and fulfilling life in small towns and villages. Thus, it’s no surprise that the team at EcoLab is comprised of people coming from all over the country, and most of us have left our hometowns and relocated to Yerevan, Armenia’s capital city. However, one little town lost in between forest-covered hills and destroyed and abandoned soviet factories has won our hearts: Vanadzor. Once a vibrant urban culture and an important center of chemical industry, this town has been left with a crashed economy, unemployed and hopeless youth — and the best rock music in the country. Whatever it is — we have fallen for Vanadzor immediately and irreversibly.
In the beginning was the idea
2015, Yana Mkrtchyan had an idea to build a hub where we would practice our understanding of sustainability; she had visited Khata Maysternya, a beautiful space for residencies and trainings in Ukraine, and was inspired by the idea.
EcoLab cares a lot about sustainability: we have been doing projects on active citizenship and sustainable development for years. For this reason, we became very critical of ourselves: as we used to rent hotels for seminars, we had to negotiate with every single kitchen — explain them our values and persuade them to cater us with local, seasonal and vegetarian food; we used spaces where we knew that workers, especially female workers, were being exploited by long working hours and low wages. Needless to say, this idea bothered us.
Thus, a dream was born: the idea of creating a space in which we would be able to design according to our own vision, and which we would be able to run with our own rules. We dreamt of a non-formal education center, where local youth would be able to organise their initiatives and test innovative ecological and social ideas; a place where exchanges with local and international experts, artists, activists, and travellers would take place, and a nest where EcoLab would host its own trainings. We also wanted to re-invest a substantial part of the income generated from the house to support sustainable community projects and social ventures of our alumni throughout rural communities of Armenia.
It is usual for families to build houses for their future generations in Armenia. But it is not usual at all for friends or colleagues to start a collective space together, especially without having money, and for a non-profit project. Moreover, we were an all-female team who had to deal with restrictions that women experience in a largely patriarchal society — especially in an overwhelmingly male-dominated sphere, such as construction.
We did not have many local examples to learn from, but we had colleagues and friends from the MitOst network who were already doing similar projects, and who were open for “sharing and caring” for the project.
Boo Alternative House
In 2016, EcoLab bought an abandoned house in the suburbs of Vanadzor, situated in the middle of beautiful hilly forests, in a river canyon rich with biodiversity and not far from the highest peak of the area — Maymekh mountain. We called it Boo Alternative House in appreciation of the famous Bubo-Bubo owl living in the forests of Vanadzor (“boo” stands for owl in Armenian).
“Boo Alternative House is one of the places where I feel concentrated on ideas, this place inspires me so much! It allows me to communicate with people who share similar ideas, and, as a final gift, this space allows me to feel nature and explore it from its origins.” Lusine Karapetyan, alumna and mentor of EcoLab
Social and ecological investments
We needed money to refurbish the house, and our colleague and friend Sebastian Wehrsig brought in the idea of social and ecological investments. Essentially, it meant asking people who know and trust us to give us a loan of at least $500 for 3 years with 0% interest rate, which we would return part by part within 3 years, accompanied by small local gifts. More than 20 people chipped in, plus a few individuals and organisations made donations. We are now in the second year of paying back the loans and hopefully very soon the house will also generate income for local investments to community projects of our alumni.
“Now Boo Alternative House is the only location of its kind in the region, offering a non-formal space for up to 25 young people to engage in educational and cultural activities. It is a multi-purpose space and can host various projects: trainings, hikes, art residencies, yoga classes, team meetings or simply retreats.”
How sustainable can you be?
Sustainability is an ongoing effort, a work is progress, so there is always space for improvement.
● We do not burn gas; we invested a lot into a system which would burn pellets to heat water and warm the house. After 3 years we are still struggling to find the right pellets or briquettes which will be energy efficient. The experiment is ongoing; we often have to burn wood. Now we are also installing solar panels which will help cut the use of electricity.
● All the furniture was made from reused or recycled wood. We cooperated with a workshop called Planka which creates furniture only from palettes or old furniture.
● We compost, although in a very simple way and still have to build a proper compost box.
● We talk about sustainable lifestyles, and also work on earning enough in order to maintain and develop the space with our own funds, to rely on grant money less and less.
● We cooperate with the local municipality and other local institutions, in order to make joint efforts for the improvement of life in the city.
Out and about the Boo Alternative House
We asked ourselves — is it enough to have this nice “island” of sustainability, or do we want to have more impact on Vanadzor and take care of the other parts of the canyon where the House is situated? Our team was crazy enough to opt for the second option.
Next year, we are starting a project on discovering the biodiversity in Vanadzor Canyon. Together with field experts, we’ll be creating routes for birdwatching, as well as observing plants and animals in the canyon. We’ll train local guides and teachers, and will offer biodiversity study tours for students. We are creating a camping site, and also cleaning up the canyon from plastic waste.
Meanwhile, a partner project, lead by EcoLab’s alumnus Emma Petrosyan, is creating Boo Mountain Bicycle Park at another location of Vanadzor canyon, and they also work for creating bicycle routes in the town, as well as a center for training cyclists of all ages. We very much hope that the local economy and social life will also benefit from all this.
“I do hope that the bike park can bring many tourists to Vanadzor. This town could become Armenia’s mountain bike destination. Cycling is a short way to happiness! I love to see people cycling and I want to make people feel happy,” says Emma Petrosyan.
Life can be wonderful outside the capital cities and major urban centres, and especially in Vanadzor, where beautiful nature, rock music, bicycles, non-formal education and caring people bond together. In the future, we might also give new life to giant ghost-factories of the soviet chemical industry. But, hey, this is a different story which is yet to be written…
Until then,
EcoLab team
