Many were moved by the 1 million AMD donation by Mr. and Mrs. Hovsep Yengoyan, a retired couple in Armenia’s Arpeni village, to the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund's "We Are Our Borders, All for Artsakh" nationwide fundraiser. 

Hetq covered the story in an October 20 article.

Eliza Sargsyan, who lives in Arshaluys, a village in Armenia’s Armavir Province, say the article and telephoned Hetq, saying that Armenians in Toronto had expressed a desire to compensate the couple for their generous donation.

"My niece, Sofia Sargsyan, who lives in Canada, read the Hetq article and decided to raise money with friends and help Hovsep Yengoyan's family with the money she raised. Initially, the intention was to raise enough money to make up for the retirees' transfer to the fund. Then we found out that the Yengoyans would not take the money, so we decided to buy some of the honey they produce and to also donate a washing machine, because we read in the article that they did not have one,” says Eliza Sargsyan.

The Yengoyans transferred all their savings to the Fund in October.

"It was a million, not a billion. What’s the fuss? It is a small amount of money for the salvation of the homeland,” 89-year-old Mr. Yengoyan told Hetq in October.

The Yengoyans were surprised when Hetq again visited the couple last month. 

“Wow, why did you go through all this trouble? We would have bought that washing machine. We would have waited, sold some honey and purchased it,” said Mrs. Asya Yengoyan. 

Eliza paid the couple 160,000 drams for forty kgs of honey along with sales slip for the washing machine. The gift was supposed to arrive in a few hours.

"Initially, the money raised was intended for this family, but the situation changed so much that the organizers of the fundraiser decided to allocate the $2,600 raised to several recipients. With that money, we were able to support four families evacuated from Artsakh to Armenia. One of the families had a volunteer killed in the war. Another had a conscript soldier who died. We gave 100,000 drams to three families and 150,000 drams to another,” says Eliza.

After consultation, it was decided to donate the purchased honey to the Women for Development NGO in Gyumri to distribute to war-affected families. Women for Development NGO, with the financial support of BfDW, provides humanitarian assistance to the families of soldiers displaced from Artsakh who died and became disabled during the war.

"Over the past month, our organization has provided food and hygienic items to war-affected families. We are still distributing humanitarian packages, to which will be added the honey that, thanks to the donation made in Canada, thanks to the Sargsyan sisters, it was possible to get from the Yengoyans,” says NGO representative Marina Juharyan.