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ARMENIA / HEATING
STORY: ARMENIA / HEATING
TRT: 2.04
SOURCE: WORLD BANK
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: FEBRUARY 2009, ASHATARAK, ARMENIA
1. Wide shot, Sveta and daughter preparing cups
2. SOUNDBITE (Armenian) Sveta Ispiryan, Teacher:
“Before, we had to worry about winter even in the summer because we had to think about where to get wood and where to store it.”
3. Close up, heater
4. SOUNDBITE (Armenian) Sveta Ispiryan, Teacher:
“I would welcome it for everyone, I am sure they would all be happy to have the same kind in their house.”
5. Wide shot, Sveta walking down the stairs of her home
6. Wide shot, heating system in school
7. Close up, heating
8. Wide shot, schoolyard
9. Med shot, teachers
10. Med shot, students in classroom
11. SOUNDBITE (Armenian) Naira Shahazizyan, Teacher:
“Of course we got sick frequently and the children had to gather around the stove, and then got headaches from the smoke.”
12. Wide shot, Gohar with students
13. SOUNDBITE (Armenian) Gohar Vapian, Geometry Teacher:
“We had frozen fingers, both the children and the teachers, and no one concentrated on the classes. Now it is very comfortable and nice, and we all first think about the lessons, both the children and the teachers.”
14. Med shot, Sona in classroom
15. SOUNDBITE (Armenian) Sona Matevosyan, Student:
“Before 2007, we didn’t have heating at school and we had to miss some activities especially extracurricular activities. Now it is very warm, very nice.”
16. Med shot, Sona and Sveta
Sveta Ispiryan – a part-time teacher- says her home in the Armenian town of Ashatarak was always full of smoke from the wood-burning stove she previously relied on to keep her and her children warm.
It was unhealthy, unsafe, and cost her too much time and money, she says:
SOUNDBITE (Armenian) Sveta Ispiryan, Teacher:
“Before, we had to worry about winter even in the summer because we had to think about where to get wood and where to store it.”
Last winter, her town’s local government installed this natural gas heater in Sveta’s home at no cost.
Sveta says her tiny apartment is now smoke-free, warmer, and she can control the heat herself, and by extension the monthly gas bill.
SOUNDBITE (Armenian) Sveta Ispiryan, Teacher:
“I would welcome it for everyone, I am sure they would all be happy to have the same kind in their house.”
Sveta’s home is among the 6,000 in Armenia to benefit so far from the country’s Urban Heating Project-funded by the World Bank- which aims at providing inexpensive, clean heat to the urban poor.
Under the project, new heating systems have also been installed so far in nearly one hundred schools in Armenia’s poorer urban neighborhoods. These boilers now heat this school, Ghapantsyan Elementary and Secondary School, in Ashatarak.
Naira Shahazizyan – a Russian language teacher - has taught here for 20 years. She says before the new heating system, they used kerosene heaters and everyone got sick from the cold and fumes:
SOUNDBITE (Armenian) Naira Shahazizyan, Teacher:
“Of course we got sick frequently and the children had to gather around the stove, and then got headaches from the smoke.”
Gohar Papyan who’s taught Geometry here for 25 years, says with the new heating system, everyone is more concentrated:
SOUNDBITE (Armenian) Gohar Vapian, Geometry Teacher:
“We had frozen fingers, both the children and the teachers, and no one concentrated on the classes. Now it is very comfortable and nice, and we all first think about the lessons, both the children and the teachers.”
Fourteen-year old Sona Matevosyan says she’s happy with the new heating system:
SOUNDBITE (Armenian) Sona Matevosyan, Student:
“Before 2007, we didn’t have heating at school and we had to miss some activities, especially extracurricular activities. Now it is very warm, very nice.”
More time at school, she says, means more chances of success in the future.
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