Interviews with Gyumri’s Birthright Armenia volunteers: Episode 3: Egor Afonin

Welcome to the second episode of a very exciting project, in which I, your host Christopher Crowson, a participant of the Birthright Armenia program, am conducting interviews with my fellow Birthright Armenia volunteers. In these interviews, I hope to get our listeners acquainted with the Gyumri volunteers, see what they are doing here in Armenia and see what kind of insights they can offer us into life in Gyumri and Armenia today.

In today’s episode we are joined by our first non-American volunteer; Egor Afonin! Egor hails from the magnificent city of Saint Petersburg, Russia and has a versatile skill set, working as a translator, a voicing actor, a video editor and a part-time teacher. Being 31 and, therefore, on the cusp of no longer qualifying being able to participate in the Birthright Armenia program, Egor decided that it was high time to come and volunteer in Armenia to discover the country of some of his ancestors. In this particularly humorous episode, Egor tells us the fascinating story of his connection to the Armenian nation, about the advantages of volunteering in Gyumri, about his experience in Armenia as someone who did not know much about the country before his arrival, and about how Birthright Armenia has helped to uncover a part of his heritage that had been somewhat ‘lost’ over generations. Thank you Egor for coming to speak to us!