Jinishian Memorial Program (JMP) Mission Statement

JMP enables Armenians in need to move from poverty and despair to self-sufficiency and hope — through relief, development and spiritual uplift.

Boy prays in the JMP day care center in Beirut. Photo by David Young.

Since 1966, the Jinishian Memorial Program (JMP) has provided basic social services and direct relief to tens of thousands of Armenians in the midst of social, economic, political and ethnic instability. The programs help the needy to cope with the lack of daily necessities in order to alleviate immediate need, poverty, poor health, and personal hardship.

JMP is, however, expanding its understanding of development and its involvement with the poor and needy in ways which go beyond direct relief, social services, and general assistance. JMP seeks to set in motion a self-development process by which the people may overcome their personal or community environment of poverty through their own reflection and action. JMP affirms the self-help approach to grass-roots community-based economic development. JMP encourages the poor and needy to articulate their perceptions, to define their goals, to plan for resolving problems, and to organize themselves for meeting social objectives which they have identified and chosen.