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Paly Grad To Discuss Armenian Internet Project

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  • Paly Grad To Discuss Armenian Internet Project

    PALY GRAD TO DISCUSS ARMENIAN INTERNET PROJECT

    Palo Alto Online
    http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=23196
    Nov 11 2011

    The 'Hidden Road Initiative' is subject of talk at Stanford's Bechtel
    International Center

    A Palo Alto High School graduate has helped to build a "virtual road"
    -- the Internet -- into Aghbradzor, Armenia, a mountain village whose
    roads to the rest of the world are cut off by severe weather for six
    months a year.

    Nanor Balabanian, now a fourth-year political science major at the
    University of California at Santa Barbara will discuss the Hidden
    Road Initiative in a presentation at Stanford University's Bechtel
    International Center Friday (Nov. 11).

    Balabanian's project was funded by the Strauss Foundation as well as
    a donation from Paly English and journalism teacher Esther Wojcicki,
    who Balabanian said was one of several teachers who inspired her when
    she and her family moved to Palo Alto from Lebanon her sophomore
    year. Her father is pastor of the Calvary Armenian Congregational
    Church in San Francisco.

    Coming to Paly was a bit of a culture shock after being raised in a
    "sheltered" Armenian village in Lebanon, she said.

    "But Paly is very open to accepting diversity and technology as part
    of the school, and opened my eyes to so many things," she said.

    Balabanian first visited Aghbradzor in 2009, with help from SLAC
    National Accelerator Laboratory scientist Anahid Yeremian. She
    documented the visit with a video camera, and the video began
    circulating on the Internet, yielding her an unsolicited $1,000 check
    from a lawyer in Los Angeles.

    "I'd never seen a check like that at that time," she recalled.

    Using funds from a $10,000 grant from the Donald A. Strauss Public
    Service Scholarship Foundation, Balabanian teamed with others in
    Armenia and the United States to create the Internet connection for
    the school in Aghbradzor.

    Participants included students from Stanford University, UCSB,
    Yerevan State University in Armenia and Balabanian's brother Azad,
    a Paly student.

    For her senior thesis at UCSB, Balabanian is studying the effect of
    technology on the youth of Aghbradzor.

    Friday's event at Bechtel International Center begins at 7:30 p.m. and
    is co-sponsored by the Stanford Armenian Students Association and UCSB.

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