Helping Children Find Their Voice, COAF Speech Therapy

_{How COAF is Building Confidence, Communication, and School Readiness Across Rural Armenia}

The first thing most parents notice is not the missing word. Often it's the silence—or the pointing instead of speaking, the frustration of not being understood, not responding to their name, or a child who quietly withdraws because communicating feels too difficult.

Speech is one of the foundations of child development. It shapes how children learn, build relationships, and participate in the world around them. When communication is disrupted, its effects ripple across nearly every aspect of a child's life.

Left without intervention, speech difficulties can shape a child's confidence, relationships, readiness to learn, and overall quality of life. COAF's speech therapy program helps change that trajectory.

Every Word Matters—One Child’s Story

When V first arrived at COAF's Child and Family Center in Karakert, conversation was almost impossible. Born with a cleft lip and palate, the three-year-old communicated almost entirely through gestures and vowel sounds, leaving family members struggling to understand even the simplest needs.

Over the next three years, COAF speech therapists worked with V and the family to strengthen speech, build vocabulary, and gradually transform isolated sounds into connected language.

Today, V speaks clearly, confidently, and expressively. For the family, the greatest milestone was not simply hearing new sounds, but hearing their child tell stories, ask questions, and express thoughts in their own voice.

Speech & Child Development in Armenia

According to UNICEF's assessment of rehabilitation services in Armenia, speech disorders are among the country's most prevalent conditions requiring rehabilitation, yet access to these services remains limited—especially for children living in rural communities. For many families, the challenge is not only recognizing speech or language difficulties, but accessing qualified specialists before those challenges begin affecting learning, relationships, and everyday life.

How Widespread are Speech Delays in COAF’s Experience?

COAF's community screenings underscore the scale of this unmet need. Ahead of the opening of the Myasnikyan Child and Family Center in 2024, COAF's speech therapy team screened children in beneficiary kindergartens, preschool groups, and grades 1–4 across 13 communities, identifying 287 children with speech and language disorders. More than eight out of every ten children screened showed speech or language difficulties that required professional support. When screenings resumed in 2026 across additional beneficiary communities, the findings remained remarkably consistent, revealing speech and language challenges in more than 80% of children assessed.

"When we began systematically screening children in our beneficiary communities, we realized the need was far greater than anyone expected. Many children had speech and language difficulties that had never been identified simply because families had no access to specialists. Early identification gives children the opportunity to build confidence, succeed in school, and participate more fully in everyday life."
— Lia Hovhannisyan, Speech Therapy Program Manager

For more than a decade, speech therapy has been an essential part of COAF's holistic approach to child development, recognizing that communication underpins learning, social participation, emotional wellbeing, and future opportunity.

Among children receiving services at COAF's Child and Family Centers, the most common challenges include:

• Speech sound disorders (dyslalia) (~30%)
• Speech and language delays and disorders, including General Speech Underdevelopment (GSD) (~30%)
• Reading and writing disorders, including dyslexia and dysgraphia (~18%)
• Stuttering (~6%)

Most beneficiaries are preschool-aged children, reinforcing the importance of identifying communication challenges before children enter school, when intervention can have the greatest lifelong impact.

Speech Therapy at COAF: More Than Speech

Today, the Speech Therapy program operates through its Child and Family Centers in Debed, Hatsik, Karakert, and Myasnikyan, serving children as young as two years old across 54 rural communities.

Every beneficiary receives an individualized therapy plan, with parents actively involved throughout the process. Speech therapists also conduct developmental screenings, identify communication and learning difficulties early, collaborate with educators and healthcare professionals, and help families access timely support.

When Communication Changes Everything

For M, that multidisciplinary approach made all the difference.

When he joined COAF's program in 2021, even entering the therapy room felt overwhelming. He rarely communicated, avoided speaking in front of others, refused to attend kindergarten, and later missed the opportunity to begin school alongside his peers because of severe communication difficulties.

Progress came slowly. First came eye contact, then participation in play, and eventually communication. When additional support was needed, the team involved a psychologist while continuing speech therapy.

Today, M speaks with age-appropriate clarity, actively participates in class, communicates confidently with teachers and classmates, and has developed many friendships.

His journey illustrates that speech therapy is not simply about producing sounds correctly. It helps children express themselves confidently and engage more fully in everyday life.

Over the past twelve years, we have learned that speech therapy is far more than a series of exercises. It is a long-term relationship of trust built between the child, the family, and the specialist. Our greatest reward over these years has been seeing children who once struggled with speech overcome those challenges and move forward with confidence—at school and in life. — Marusya Bazinyan, Speech Therapy Program Manager

Building Stronger Foundations

Community attitudes have also shifted dramatically. Today, approximately half of COAF Child and Family Center beneficiaries join the program through their parents' own initiative. At the same time, demand for services has grown so significantly that the most recent enrollment reached capacity in just 15 minutes.

The program is also helping shape Armenia's next generation of speech therapists, with several former beneficiaries now pursuing university degrees in the field.

Editor’s note: To protect the privacy of the children and families we serve, names have been changed and the photographs used in this article are illustrative. The children shown are not necessarily the ones whose stories are shared.