President Serzh Sargsyan meets Luys Foundation scholarship recipients

Today, at the Presidential Palace RA President and the co-founder of the Luys Foundation Serzh Sargsyan received the students who have been granted scholarships by the Foundation for the 2014-2015 academic year. Various alumni and students studying at the world’s best educational institutions with the help of the Luys were also present at the meeting.

They presented the works – their initiatives and first inspiring achievements along the road of utilizing their knowledge, experience and contacts for the well-being of Armenia - being implemented within the framework of the Luys Develop Armenia Together Program to the Armenian President.

According to the tradition, President Serzh Sargsyan handed the Luys Foundation scholarship certificates to the new students.

The 2014-2015 scholarship was granted to 57 new students; no more than 10 students from each higher educational institution who had been the first to submit a full application package.

Serzh Sargsyan congratulated the students and wished them further success in obtaining their education and fulfilling their future goals.

“Such meetings have already become a tradition, and to say the truth, I always look forward to them because every time I get positive impulses and energy, because at the end of the day, the ones who have gathered here are the future of Armenia, and getting in touch with the future is both a responsible and a necessary activity. Indeed, it is fine to have a good past and a long heroic history, but if you want to have a long history you have to look into the future. And our people have always behaved like that. I can bring you dozen examples, starting from being the first in the world to adopt Christianity up to creating counter machines at Mergelyan Institute of Mathematical Machines of Yerevan. If peoples are not able to make progress, they can’t have a long history. The same is true for individuals. Hence, I am pleased to congratulate you on being granted the Luys Foundation’s scholarship. This is a great success because there are probably hundreds of millions of students in the world, but only a few thousand of them manage to become students of the world’s top 10 universities. Be sure that your victory is the victory of our people since the success of each society and the victory of each society is the sum of the victories of individuals and their successes.

Over the past few weeks, I have had plenty of such pleasant moments because of the successes and victories achieved by the ones who are a bit younger than you. By this I refer to the International Science Olympiad where our pupils won 15 medals,” said Serzh Sargsyan.

The president highly praised this result taking account the fact that the pupils of the neighboring countries of Georgia and Azerbaijan won a total of 11 medals. According to the Armenian President, the indicators of the Armenian pupils are almost equal to the other neighbors of our region: the pupils of Iran and Turkey, countries with a multi-million population, won 18 medals each, while the pupils of Armenia, a country with a 3 million population, won 15 medals which is a great success. Serzh Sargsyan expressed the belief that those achievements should inspire our children; give them an opportunity to move forward and to acquire knowledge being sure that the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian people will also benefit from this.

“The Luys Foundation pursues one major goal: to form a group of individuals or as they say, a critical mass who will be capable of making changes, pushing Armenia forward and as the Executive Director of the Luys Foundation educational programs Jacqueline Karaaslanian said, responding to challenges, and unfortunately, there are a lot of challenges in our region. Unhappily, throughout millenniums our people have always faced numerous challenges. However, as it was mentioned, these challenges give us an opportunity; an opportunity to overcome difficulties and come out even stronger and as the famous intellectual put it, “What does not kill you makes you stronger.” We should stand even firmer. Over the years, neither I nor the other members of the board of trustees have not lost our interest in the Foundation; on the contrary, it has increased, because to say the truth, we did not expect to have so many beneficiaries, so many young men, who are competitive and are not inferior to their peers from the most developed countries. I perfectly understand and we have done it purposefully that the recipients of the Luys Foundation scholarship are not only the citizens of the Republic of Armenia and that is our advantage. I am confident that whatever citizenship you have, including that of Armenia, you have to live by Armenia and to spare some time on it. There can’t be a viable diaspora without Armenia, just like Armenia can’t be strong without a strong diaspora,” said President Serzh Sargsyan to the recipients of the Luys Foundation scholarship.

On behalf of all the beneficiaries of the Luys Foundation the president thanked the benefactors of the Foundation who make their contribution to this non-state foundation and are concerned with the future of our country and people and are ready to give a share of their property for the development and longevity of Armenia.

The Armenian President wished the participants success and expressed readiness to answer any question, listen to the ideas and views of the Luys students and alumni and learn about their activities.