Artsakh’s Sos village to have new kindergarten.

The Hayastan All-Armenian Fund has begun construction of a kindergarten in Sos, a village in Artsakh's Martuni Region. The project is co-sponsored by the fund's French affiliate and the government of Artsakh.

The future kindergarten will be a two-story structure designed to accommodate up to 50 children. The first floor will comprise a locker room, naprooms, restrooms, a kitchen, a laundry, and storage rooms; the second floor will consist of playrooms, an events hall, and a gym. The facility will also feature a sizeable playground. Currently crews are laying the foundations of the kindergarten, which is slated to open in fall 2012.

In the meantime preschoolers in Sos will continue to attend the community's existing kindergarten, which was built in the 1970s. The campus is in a state of serious disrepair and lacks some of the core amenities required of a modern educational institution, among them central heating and even a sewage-disposal system.

Due to the dilapidated condition of the old campus, some families have opted altogether not to send their children to the kindergarten, according to Sos mayor Igor Ghahramanyan.

Commenting on the construction of the future kindergarten, the mayor reiterated his community's great joy and anticipation, given the imminent availability of a spacious and comfortable kindergarten featuring state-of-the-art amenities.

Sos is the site of another major development project, the construction of a critically needed potable-water network, which the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund implemented in 2010 with the co-sponsorship of the French-Armenian community and the government of Artsakh. Thanks to the initiative, the residents of Sos have since enjoyed around-the-clock access to water.

"Our hope is that such projects will vastly improve prospects of economic and social development in the village of Sos, which flanks the main road to the Amaras Monastery complex," said Ara Vardanyan, executive director of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund. "In this respect, our high praise goes to our French affiliate, for its consistent support of preschool-building initiatives in Artsakh. One of these is the soon-to-be-completed construction of a kindergarten in Drakhtik, a village in the Hadrut Region."

Sos, which traces its history to the 1700s, is home to 1,040 residents. The community's main occupations are cattlebreeding and winemaking. The local agricultural-machinery park, established in recent years in Sos village, has gone a long way to improve farming productivity, Ghahramanyan said.