Swarovski Foundation's grants program welcomes applications from creatives in art, design, engineering

16.07.2022 (Caucasian Journal). The Swarovski Foundation announced it is accepting applications to its Creatives for Our Future program from young people worldwide (aged 21–30) working in disciplines such as fashion, design, art, architecture, technology, and engineering – with no limit to creative medium.⠀

▶ Հայերեն:  This content is also available in Armenian here. 

Creatives for Our Future is a global mentorship and grant program designed with advisor the United Nations Office for Partnerships to identify and accelerate the next generation of creative leaders in sustainability. Successful applicants should have a keen interest in, demonstration of, or exemplary potential to use the creative process to accelerate awareness, technologies or solutions for sustainable development.

The Swarovski Foundation welcomes applications from people of all backgrounds, sexual orientations, nationalities, religions and beliefs.

To submit application, you need to be between the ages of 21 – 30 at the time of the time of application and before the deadline for applications. Link for application submission is here. 

Pegor PAPAZIAN: "Our super goal is to invent the future of learning"

07.07.2022 (Caucasian Journal) Our guest is Pegor PAPAZIAN, Chief Development Officer, TUMO Center for Creative Technologies (Armenia). TUMO is an international network of schools for teenagers (12-18 years) that offer free education in IT, technology, and design, founded in 2011 in Yerevan. While major part of centers are located in Armenia, TUMO has opened its schools in many countries.

The TUMO's menu of courses sounds tempting for nearly every world's teenager: Animation, Game Development, Filmmaking, Web Development, Music, Writing, Drawing, Graphic Design, 3D Modeling, Programming, Robotics, Motion Graphics, Photography, New Media... Is it all available for free? Which countries are lucky to have TUMO centers already, and which are on the waiting list?

Alexander KAFFKA, editor-in-chief of Caucasian Journal:  Dear Pegor, welcome to Caucasian Journal! You are one of the founders and leaders of TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, which is now becoming a truly global educational project originating from Armenia. For Caucasian Journal, TUMO is a “must cover”, because it’s symbolizing all our priorities in one bottle: It’s innovative, it’s about free access to education, it’s created in the South Caucasus, and it spreads internationally raising the global awareness of this region. Though our readers already know about TUMO from the recent interview with Rev Labaredian, it won’t hurt to talk once again about the basics of your project. What was at the root of TUMO, and how did you get involved in it? How did it all happen?

Pegor PAPAZIAN:  TUMO is a program initially developed by our founding benefactors Sam and Sylva Simonian, my wife Marie Lou and myself. Marie Lou and I had just moved to Armenia with our five children who went into the local education systems at various grade levels, and the TUMO program was conceived as a complement to that education system, largely inherited from the Soviet Union, that was missing, at the time, many important pedagogical foundations. The education system was too focused on identifying and developing a small intellectual elite, often chosen arbitrarily, at the expense of the huge potential of the majority of school children. Over time, we realized that what we had created essentially as an “antidote” to that ineffective system of education was actually in high demand not just in Armenia, but across the world.