Meet our Birthright Armenia intern

Our intern Rachel Townzen at TEDxKids@Yerevan

I’ll never forget the day my hundred-year-old Armenian grandmother told me there was a show she wanted to watch because she likes to know what Armenians are up to. I cringed, hoping she would forget all about this before she’d have a chance to keep up with the Kardashians. There have been countless times in my months in Yerevan as a Birthright Armenia volunteer that I’ve wished my grandma were still alive, but I especially wish I could show her TEDxYerevan and the talks that have educated me about the awesome things Armenians are up to. I know she would have loved it as much as I do.

When I applied for Birthright, I had two major questions: What makes me Armenian besides the genocide, and what does it mean to be Armenian today? In my essay, I wrote: “I want to bridge my …