What is United AIO?
United AIO (pronounced “Ayo”) is a new collaboration of the leading professional, civic, and benevolent organizations of the Armenian-American Diaspora that aims to bring together the professionals, thinkers, inventors, and entrepreneurs of the Diaspora in a unique and ambitious way, beginning immediately, to work on a series of strategically relevant projects that will contribute materially to Armenia’s prosperity, resiliency, and national security.
Predicated on the common values of collaboration, transparency, accountability, community service, and integrity, United AIO aims to harness the united and coordinated strength, talent, energy, expertise, and material resources of the Armenia Diaspora with as much cooperation and as little friction as possible. Our aim is to build a new model for Diasporan engagement and find a new way of doing projects to meet the critical needs of Armenia now and in the future.
We will go beyond just examining what Armenia’s strategic needs are now and proposing solutions in the abstract to meet those needs. United AIO will create a forum for creativity and engagement in which conference participants will be able to bring their best ideas forward and propose specific projects. At the same time, United AIO will also create a space in which proposed projects and their proponents can be introduced to talent and potential sponsors and vice versa. giving all the ability to harness the professional expertise, potential, energy, and resources of the worldwide Armenian community. To our knowledge, this has never been done before certainly in the Armenian world.
We will also challenge participants to recurring engagement and action after United AIO 2021 is over, so that the effect of the conference does not dissipate into the ether with the last echo of the closing speech.
We believe this approach has enormous potential and we hope it will become the model for working with Armenia going forward, beginning at this critical moment in Armenia’s history. To make Armenia the engine of its own destiny, we must think and act boldly and differently.
Conference Title
United AIO Inaugural Conference 2021
Tagline
Building Armenia Together: Wiser & Stronger
Purpose
To bring the principal professional, benevolent and civic organizations of the Armenian-American Diaspora together for the first time to systematically collaborate on projects of strategic significance for Armenia.
Mission Statement
To assist Armenia beginning immediately with a series of strategically relevant projects that contribute materially to Armenia’s prosperity, resiliency, and national security.
To put the united and coordinated strength, talent, energy, expertise and material resources of the Armenia Diaspora behind that effort with as much cooperation and as little friction as possible, beginning with this collaboration of the key professional, benevolent and civic organizations of the Armenian-American Diaspora.
Key Objectives
- To take stock of the challenges encountered and lessons learned by Diasporan organizations striving to help Armenia, from the bitter experience of the 2020 war and beyond.
- To transcend conventional wisdom and status quo thinking about how to frame, select and design projects for Armenia by adopting a strategic approach that puts the promotion of national resilience, national security, self-sufficiency and economic growth exclusively at the center of the consideration.
- To adopt a new multi-disciplinary, multi-organizational mindset that aims to draw on the expertise and wisdom of the whole of the Diaspora and in every case invites the participation of all Armenian organizations with relevant expertise.
- To coalesce around a set of principles to drive the framing, selection and design of projects that are right for Armenia at this moment in history.
- To identify the strategic priorities for Armenia and identify and commit to a carefully selected group of tangible, achievable projects addressed to Armenia’s short-term, medium-term and long-term strategic needs under each of the strategic priorities.
- To establish the essential structures and habits of communication and collaboration across the Diasporan organizations and their members and constituencies.
- To bring unaffiliated Armenians into the mainstream of this Armenian Diasporan effort.
Key Outcomes
- To adopt a statement of principles and set of criteria for the framing, selection and design of Armenia projects that put economic growth, resiliency and national security exclusively at the center of the consideration.
- To identify the key areas of strategic and systemic importance to Armenia’s economic growth, national resiliency and national security.
- To select and present before the conference 15 achievable projects, 3 each in those key strategic areas.
- To recruit teams for the implementation of those projects.
- To attract financial support for those projects.
- To commit to a concrete action plan for the projects and for the next United AIO conference the date for which will be announced.
- To publicize this new paradigm of strategic thinking and whole-of-Diaspora collaboration across the Armenian world.
To learn more about the format and see the Agenda, click below.