David Yang: “Ideas and projects will return to Armenia and everything will start”

Yerevan/Mediamax/. Chairman of ABBYY Company’s Board of Directors David Yang stated that “we want to pour a new stream, new energy into the educational process in Armenia”.

Mediamax reports that David Yang, who is one of the initiators of “Ayb” project, said this in an interview to “Aniv” Magazine.

““Ayb” project was initially started from the graduates of Yerevan School of Physics and Mathematics, who realized that it was a very serious starting point for further steps in life. Trying to repay our debt to the school and preserve the high level of education in it, we suddenly faced the fact that in case of necessity of large investments, many investors would not want to invest their means in a state school, since they would not have control over the use of those means. The next step was the decision to establish a private school. But we saw that to invest in that school and to attract the best teachers of Yerevan would mean to weaken all the remaining schools, since there are no many such level teachers. In the process of gradual development of the idea, we came to the conclusion that it is necessary to help all schools. There was the desire to plough up that soil, plant new seeds in it and give the existing schools the chance to more successfully develop their educational process. Only after this work we understood that we could try to establish something of our own without finding ourselves in a conflict of ideas”, David Yang stated.

He noted that “our goal is to transform into something bigger than an individually taken school”.

“This is why we started to set up an association, a club, involving many people. We want to pour a new stream, new energy into the educational process in Armenia. Organization of a private school is a narrower task, although it is also honorable and correct. But in a situation Armenia is, an initiative is required in the sphere of education in general. On the one hand, we will pay attention to “Ayb” school, but the results of works over the manuals, competitions, contests, process of teacher training and establishment of conditions for specialists from abroad will be applied to other schools and other projects as well. We do not think that we will manage to do all this alone. In the process of public work over the entire educational field we would like to unite with other initiatives, other deserving projects and continue our work together. Only joint work will allow us taking a different look at this process. In the final end, all of us need to do everything for high quality secondary education to be prestigious in the country for the children to realize why they need to study sciences, make experiments, solder different devices, write programs for iPhone or iPad. They should become alumni, who will be very much wanted in the best higher educational institutions of the world. If we offer such an alternative, create such motivation among the parents and children, in 5-10 years already, being young specialists, graduates of best higher educational institutions will return to Armenia for this or that purpose. They will be able to return physically, if by that moment there are already spots, where their talent and efforts to be used. And if this does not take place, they will create their own companies abroad, will increase their competition there and will return to Armenia as venture capitalists, business angels (private investors, who invest their own means into innovative projects, are called this way), professionals and they will be the ones to establish those spots for growth, which will make it possible to make the next step in development of the society.

Everything starts from the fact that first we give young people in Armenia high class education, then we let them freewheeling for higher educational institutions to gain international experience, understand the world problems. The best of them will become presidents and vice-presidents of big companies or will be able to establish their own business, earn money and will return to Armenia with that money as business angels. We see the interest, the desire in our generation to return and to do something. People from the next generation will return as well. And it is important that when they come back in 10-15 years, they see a huge number of young specialists in Armenia. And they will give those professionals workplaces there, in Armenia. And at that time, not everybody will have to leave for abroad in order to gain experience. The technologies, ideas and projects will already return to Armenia, and laboratories will be established there in the sphere of genomics, pharmaceutics, IT, modern multimedia, telecommunication projects, 3D animation: at the level of everything related to intellectual property and brains. And everything will start. A similar story happened with Israel, Finland, Singapore. These are small countries, which are comparable to Armenia as to their population number. They created the necessary conditions”, David Yang stated.