The results of the "2023 Youth Capital of the Republic of Armenia" competition have been summarized by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sports.
Two cities applied for the "Youth Capital of the Year" competition in 2023: Tsaghkadzor (Kotayk Marz of the Republic of Armenia) and Metsamor (Armavir Marz of the Republic of Armenia). During the final stage of the application evaluation process, the competition commission declared Metsamor the Youth Capital of Armenia in 2023 by combining the results of expert evaluation and short message (SMS) voting.
Before the announcement of the grades, Zara Aslanyan, the head of the Department of Youth Policy, Supplementary and Continuing Education of the Ministry of Education and Culture, presented the summary procedure of the competition. Veronika Khorasanyan, secretary of the tender committee, also gave the entire bid evaluation process and tender holding.
According to the tender regulations, the tender committee evaluated the bids according to the established requirements. In October, expert evaluation group members visited the applicant cities, where they had meetings with community leaders, municipal staff, and heads of educational institutions. They got to know representatives of local youth organizations and active youth groups, studying their level of involvement in local self-government bodies. As a condition, the potential and possibilities of the communities' sports, cultural, entertainment, and recreation facilities, as well as the current and planned youth programs, were considered.
Short message (SMS) voting was held from October 26 to November 14. For 20 days, all RA citizens, regardless of their place of residence, could vote for their preferred city.
Thus, according to the assessment of the expert group, the city of Metsamor scored the most points in the competition, and Tsaghkadzor, according to SMS voting. Since, according to the regulations, in case of similar issues, the advantage is given to the assessment of the expert group, the Metsamor community of the Armavir marz of RA was declared the winner of the youth capital competition.
According to experts, they made a difficult choice in this year's competition compared to last year. They emphasized that the visits to the candidate cities had a more critical and decisive role in the assessment than the study of the submitted documents.
According to the representative of the city of Metsamor, their city has excellent prospects, and this victory will give new energy to the town. According to him, much work is being carried out in Metsamor today, and the title of "Youth Capital" is an additional responsibility to attend the planned programs properly. The representative of the city of Tsaghkadzor, in turn, expressed his willingness to support, get to know, and cooperate with the youth community of the winning city, Metsamor, through the exchange of experience.
It should be noted that Yerevan does not participate in the "Youth Capital of the Year" competition. The same city cannot win twice in a row.
The competition has been held since 2014. The first youth capital of RA was Sisian, followed by Stepanavan (2015), Gyumri (2016), Charentsavan (2017), Ijevan (2018), and Vanadzor (2019); the competition was not held in 2020, then Kapan (2021), and In 2022, Hrazdan.
