January's Featured Producer Partner | Manushak Nersisyan with Goghovit Knits

Manushak has established a knitting group with women from Goghovit and the surrounding villages.  If they complete her training program, she employs them in her business, Goghovit Knits.  These women, including Manushak who is physically disabled, use knitting techniques that have been handed down for generations.  Manushak has helped empower local women with much needed income in a very poor and remote community.  Manushak and her team produce hats, sweaters, scarves, socks, and pillow covers for HDIF.

Goghovit is a village and rural community in the Shirak province of Armenia, near the Turkish and Georgian borders.  The landscape is marked by rough, rocky terrain with roads that become inaccessible during the winter due to the harsh climate.  Lack of employment is the greatest challenge in thie isolated area, and for this reason many of the men have left to work in Russia.