Armenia – ANSA – The Armenian National Students’ Association

The Armenian National Students’ Association (ANSA) – is an organization of 15 local student unions from all over Armenia. Being the largest representative of the student body on the national level our organization aims to advocate, promote and protect educational, social, economic, cultural interests and rights of over 90 thousand students (October 2012) both on national and international level.

Our organization works for having stable, affordable and quality higher education. We are an organization that likes to say YES!

Mission
Our mission is to promote, distribute and protect students’ rights by forming an army of students who are able to realize their rights and responsibilities and are able to stand for them.

ANSA has another special mission of students’ integration on international level. ANSA is a link for students from national to international level and vice versa.

History
Armenian National Student Association was officially founded in September 9th, 2003, when the heads of 9 HEIs’ student unions united and signed an agreement to establish a national student union. Before that, in 2001, 4 HEI student unions, i.e. the Student Council of Yerevan State Economic University, the Student Parliament of Yerevan State Medical University, the Student Council of French University in Armenia, the Student Council of State Engineering University united into the Interinstitutional Coordinational Council (ICC), which later was logically followed by the foundation of ANSA. However, the association is considered to have been established even earlier, during 1990s, when the first local self-governing student bodies were being founded in RA.

Description
ANSA is a voluntary, independent, and non-profit umbrella organization for the state and private universities, as well as for the student authority bodies and branches of foreign governmental and non-governmental institutions, which is established and functioned on the basis of the provisions of

• The RA Constitution,
• The existing legislations,
• The developed statute.

It is guided by the principles of legality, equality, publicity, voluntarism of members, freedom of conscience and justice.

ANSA is an association which respects the autonomy of its members, which are in direct contact with hundreds of thousands of students. The contact is held through provision of information, education, networking, and a range of publication and professional activities.

ANSA implements a lot of projects connected with all the spheres students are interested in. The activities of ANSA are mainly aimed to advance the active participation and involvement of student self-governing organizations in the governing processes of the higher education institutions. The main goals of the ANSA are:

• To provide the diversity of students’ opinions within the educational system as a whole.
• To raise students’ involvement in the decision-making process in higher education by ensuring an independent, transparent and democratic participation.
• To promote the students social, economic and cultural interests, as well as to advocate the students’ rights which will directly and indirectly have a positive impact on students’ status and well-being in the society.
• To ensure equal opportunities for all students regardless of their gender and social status, political and religious affiliation and convictions, ethnic, racial and cultural background, and other different orientations, equal opportunities for people with disabilities.
• To advocate the idea of equal educational opportunities within all social levels.
• To assist in establishing and strengthening of cooperation among Armenian students and young people from the regions and Diaspora, as well as the establishment and strengthening of relations between Armenian and international students and student unions.
• To organize student conferences, festivals, lectures, seminars, debates, competitions, meetings and other events.
• To increase the efficiency of student educational programs, as well as to raise the motivation of the students for academic, sport, cultural and social activities.

Use all the measures to detect and prevent speculations, harassment or any illegal activities towards the students.

Organization’s Values and Policy
The ANSA logo shows students as eternity that stands shoulder to shoulder standing for unity, and each student embodies the values of our organization. In order to have normal functioning in the future, our organization adopted a policy of a clear, stable and strong system of values and the protection of each element of these values will result in the creation of a healthy working atmosphere. These values include the following five elements:

• democracy
• equality
• autonomy
• transparency
• cooperation and unity.

The policy priority of our organization must be the establishment of democratic, open, transparent, representative and independent student governments. Student self-government bodies should be the advocates of students’ rights and should be the representatives of students both at HEIs and in-state and local government agencies.

Our organization seeks to provide equal opportunities for all: first of all, for members to fully participate in activities of student government bodies; and, secondly, to ensure the involvement balance of social, gender, and different religious groups.

Bologna Process and European higher education system are the two major tasks of the activity of ANSA since its foundation. ANSA encourages and stimulates the dialogue and cooperation between higher education institutions, their staff, students and corresponding stakeholders through its activity. And in this context ANSA makes its best to promote the implementation of the Bologna process principles and the formulation of European higher education area in RA.