YEREVAN, January 24. /ARKA/. The SOS Children Village in Ijevan houses children left without parental care. Here they receive care, upbringing and education just like in a family. The charity program also makes every effort to reunite the children with their biological families whenever possible.

From now on the SOS Children Village will have an alternative source of energy thanks to its partners - Acba Bank and Visa Barerar cardholders.  The 50 kW solar plant will relieve the village of a large financial burden by providing long-term savings.

This is the second phase of the program: back in 2018, Acba Bank installed 14 solar water heaters under the same Visa Barerar scheme implemented together with the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund, completely solving the water heating issue.

"We will continue working to increase the volume of funds generated by Visa Barerar scheme, so that to have as many of our clients become benefactors as possible. To become a benefactor, one only needs to use their Visa Barerar cards to make payments, the rest we do ourselves at the expense of our profits. This program realized in SOS Children Village was also important for us because in addition to savings, about 100 children living here have seen in their everyday life how important renewable energy is. We hope that when they grow up, they will become advocates of our country to use clean energy so that the environment is not polluted or pollution is minimal," said Arsen Melkonyan, Acba Bank Director for Business Operations Coordination.

'Such solar energy programs were common even 5 years ago, and the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund was one of the first to stimulate the development of solar, and renewable energy in general, in Armenia. And today we see the scope of solar panels as well as water heaters being used all over the country. We believe that the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund due to its cooperation with Acba Bank has made quite a significant contribution to the development of solar energy in Armenia and Artsakh," said Executive Director of Hayastan All-Armenian Fund Haykak Arshamyan.

"Initiatives like this are very important so that we can cut our expenses and try to use the money we save to benefit children and their development," said Spartak Sargsyan,  National Director of SOS Children Village charitable foundation.

Acba Bank, the partner of SOS Children Village, is implementing its program with the assistance of Visa Barerar cardholders. Acba together with Hayastan All-Armenian Fund first issued Visa Barerar charity cards back in 2012.

As part of the program, the bank transfers 0.1% of  all payment transactions made with Barerar Visa cards, as well as 50% of the service fee, from its profits to a special account of the Fund. Cardholders simply make transactions, from which the bank sends the profit from its own funds to charity. -0-