WebTalks
The Foundations of AGBU
Raymond Kévorkian
Dr. Kévorkian describes the origins of AGBU and the circumstances that motivated its founders.
The Foundations of AGBU
Historian Raymond Kévorkian explains the beginnings of AGBU and the circumstances that motivated the impressive cadre of founding members who established the organization more than one hundred years ago. Today the largest non-profit Armenian organization in the world, AGBU was founded in 1906 on the heels of the Hamidian massacres in Ottoman Turkey. The organization’s visionaries sought to improve living conditions for rural Armenian communities who found themselves in severe socio-economic conditions and under threat of forced migration. A decade later, with the complete destruction of Ottoman Armenian communities during the Genocide, AGBU shifted its focus to adapt to the overwhelming humanitarian needs of refugees and survivors in newly forming Armenian diasporan communities all over the world.