Grant recipient: Gohar Davtyan
Shirak province, Anushavan community
Grant amount: 1․109․000 AMD
Emphasizing the importance of rural women’s and girls’ capacity building and empowering entrepreneurship among them, from August 2020 through May 2021, “Women for Development” NGO (WFD NGO), with the funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria, has implemented the “Economic empowerment of vulnerable young rural women in Shirak region through entrepreneurship and enlargement of self-owned business” project.
Gohar Davtyan was one of the 28 applicants who had the opportunity to participate in business courses organized by the WFD NGO, to acquire basic knowledge and skills for starting own business. Out of 9 project proposals submitted, the following 4 most interesting and sustainable ideas became the winners:
- – “Strawberry House” – greenhouse in Arpeni village
– “Violet Dried Fruits” – dried fruit production in Tsoghamarg village
– “Sweet Areg” – pastry and candy production unit in Anushavan village
– “Green Oasis” – greenhouse in Tsoghamarg village.
“For me, my newly established business is a platform for creating recipes for innovative, beautiful, tasty and unique pastries and candy. This gives me an opportunity for doing what I love, making money and financially assisting my family․
Responsibility and love are the main factors ensuring success of any work and I move forward with this principle”.
Establishment of a pastry and candy production unit named after her son Areg, was one of Gohar’s dreams. Gohar adores her kitchen – a place where she not only cooks delicious meals and bakes pastries, but also creates and finds new approaches for serving and decorating foods. She uniquely decorated even daily breakfasts for her little child, which made it appealing and pleasant to eat.
Family members, friends and relatives always appreciate Gohar’s cooking and baking skills.
“Very often, I would post pastries and my son’s breakfasts on my Facebook page and I was getting so many comments of appreciation and encouragement, which made me confident. This is how I came up with an idea of starting my own business. When I heard about this project, I decided not to miss the opportunity”, told Gohar during a conversation with us.
A pharmacist by profession, Gohar is applying her cooking and baking experiences in a large and nicely equipped kitchen, through mixing the traditional and new methods and improving and developing her own ideas. Her pastries and desserts are very different from those being sold in shops, because she uses only homemade products and newest approaches in her recipes.
For Gohar, the study visit to “Camelia Cakes” pastry workshop in Gyumri, organized in frames of the project was extremely useful. She saw various units of the workshop, learnt about the details of organizing large-volume production, discovered professional and marketing secrets and how is it possible to achieve success with only 1 mixer.
In her initiative, Gohar highly values the support of all family members, who have always encouraged and supported her. Gohar’s husband Samson
has taken up the responsibility for the construction works of the production unit being built next to their house. His level of responsibility and enthusiasm was so high, that despite working in Yerevan, Samson traveled to Anushavan almost every day and worked long hours on the construction, in order to meet the deadline.
Gohar has other goals as well. If successful in her business, she intends to organize cooking classes for the young girls and women in her community and establish a small café, which will in turn create new employment opportunities.
Gohar believes that love and responsibility are her keys to success and is assured that everything is possible when there is the will.
