About Tegh Foundation
TEGH Foundation for Psychological and Cultural Connection is a grassroots non-profit organization founded in Armenia in 2013. We work to strengthen mental health, psychosocial wellbeing, and community resilience through an integrated approach that brings together psychological support, creative arts methods, cultural practices, professional capacity building, and sustained community engagement.
A central principle of our work is building sustainable local capacity by strengthening the resources that already exist within communities. To this end, we create networks of professionals and participants that can continue to grow beyond individual projects. Our network of local specialists is expanding, and their involvement in TEGH programs becomes an ongoing part of their professional practice and development. We build long-term relationships with local professionals and institutions throughout structured programs, in identifying and responding to the psychological and social needs of their communities. We also integrate psychological and psychosocial approaches with creative and cultural practices, including visual and performing arts and a range of creative methodologies, as ways of supporting emotional development, self-expression, resilience, connection and recovery.
Since 2020, our work has focused particularly on children, adolescents, and families affected by conflict, displacement, and ongoing insecurity mainly in near-border communities of Armenia. Our creative, community-based programs are trauma- and PTSD-informed, involving professional training and supervision, delivered in collaboration with schools, families, local communities, and regional authorities. In the Tavush region in particular, we have worked closely with regional authorities to identify local psychologists and artists and integrate them into our programs through continuous training and professional supervision. These locally embedded professionals facilitate group activities for adolescents in their own and neighboring communities, enabling TEGH to reach children and families in the majority of border villages while building durable relationships with schools, local administrations, families, and community members. In collaboration with UNICEF Armenia, we published a booklet on one of our major initiatives, titled “Parunakum” (“Containing”).
Since 2023 we have facilitated several psychoeducational seminar series for adolescents from our earlier programs. Guided by a psychotherapist and an artist, these groups select their own themes for exploration, centering the voices of young people and the issues they themselves identify as most relevant and urgent. We aim to develop a cross-community network of these participants, creating a peer-led youth platform for ongoing support, dialogue, and activities on themes of their interest.
Alongside our Yerevan office, TEGH has maintained a dedicated community center in Artsvaberd village, Tavush region, since 2022. In addition to our ongoing structured psychological, psychosocial, psychoeducational, and creative programs for children, adolescents, and families, since 2024 we have launched three projects: Mommy and Me (ages 3-5), which strengthens the emotional bond between mother and child through joint play and creative activities; Mindfulness (ages 7-9), which supports psychological development and resilience, and builds skills in attention and self-regulation; and Kar-Chkar (ages 7-11), which introduces children to literature and fosters a love of reading alongside emotional expression, creativity, imagination, and problem-solving.