Income-Generating Activities - Action Against Hunger

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The results are intended as a quantitative assessment and can be statistically projected
onto the industry at large.
Since the centre is the biggest region of Yerevan, and the town centre is in this region,
it was decided to interview 40 people, instead of 20. Among customers of centre
region, there were also people living in other regions, but doing shopping in the
centre after work. Those opinions are considered as information from the centre region.
Interviewers were introduced as students to make interviewees feel more confident
and give answers more correctly.
Customer survey interviewees’ demographics: Out of 220 interviewees the ratio
of female and male was 58% and 42%; the family size of more than half of interviewees
was 4-5 people; and 50% were from 36-50 age group. Interviewees holding a university
degree are 54% among all interviewees, only 1% had 8-year school education. The
rest are people with high-school education, which is equivalent to 10-year school in
Armenian education system.
Customer Survey: The interviewer records the consumer preferences for meat purchases,
including lamb/mutton, for 3 occasions: “everyday meal”, “hosting guests”,
and “picnic”. While the purchasing intensity was estimated applying the following
time-scale: “every day”, “once or twice in a week”, “once or twice in a month”, and
“once or twice in a year”, the interviewees were separated to the following categories:
“myself “,”anyone”, “spouse / husband”, and “other”.
This approach helped develop consumers’ preferences for all 3 occasions by finding
out the purchaser and purchasing intensity rate per month by types of meat.
Beef consumption is predominant compared to other meat consumption. In the
second place is chicken, and in the third place is fish. Lamb consumption is in the fifth
place; it comes after pork. In Armenian culture meals are made of mainly beef and
chicken. Fish is used as a lower and fresh price meat product.
The Armenian cuisine is a wonderful world of many different tastes and smells. It
is a very specific part of the mysterious Oriental cuisine. Armenians are well known for
their hospitality, and for hosting guests they prepare special dishes mainly from meat
products. In this case, beef is the most commonly (Armenian “dolma”, which is grape
leaf wrapped meat, beef “kufta” – balls of minced meat, beef “khashlama” – boiled
meat, and etc.) For hosting guests customers prefer using beef, pork and chicken.
Lamb and fish are in fourth and fifth places in the figure accordingly.
Armenians like outdoor activities, including picnics, parties. The main food used
in picnics is Armenian barbequed pork, lamb and vegetables. Thus, Armenians prefer
using mainly pork, and chicken and lamb. Fish and beef are in the same consumption
level after above stated meat types.
High consumption level of pork for hosting and picnic occasions can be explained
by the Armenian tradition of using fried pork or pork barbeque.
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INCOME GENERATING ACTIVITIES: A KEY CONCEPT IN SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURTIY