From Marseille, Home to Armenia
Despite holding an MBA degree earned at European universities and having a job at the well-known Mercure hotel in Marseille, Norayr Arakelyan felt like an outsider in France and longed to return to Armenia. The turning point for him came with the volunteer program called Depi Hayk, whose name means “To Armenia” in Armenian.
Many Armenians from the diaspora, Norayr says, mistakenly believe that volunteering comes down to sweeping streets. He, however, found from his own experience that the program allows people to work in their field and to make useful connections. As the holder of a degree in business engineering, he coordinated a performance by the French dance company Hervé Koubi at a large concert at the Cascade in Yerevan, where he had occasion to talk with the ambassadors of France and Belgium. Norayr realized that such work could become a springboard for his professional career.
His fourteen-year-old sister, who was born in France, also shares his love of Armenia. After her first trip to the homeland, as her brother tells it, she cried at the airport and did not want to leave Armenia. Norayr admits that the country has its shortcomings, from chaotic traffic to certain stereotyped ways of thinking, but he values a warmth of heart that, in his view, Europe lacks. He believes that it is not enough merely to complain about problems; real change has to begin with oneself.
After finishing his volunteer work on the team preparing the COP17 conference on biodiversity, Norayr Arakelyan decided not to return to France. He is staying on in Armenia to apply his European experience in local business. “Without knowing your roots, you are incomplete,” he says.
