The Foundation for the Support of Youth Education

Contact Information
Address: Kazakhstan 484000, g. Taraz, ul. Pushkina 52 
Tel: 8 + 7-(32622) 3-39-54/4-81-73
E-mail: gumkol@tarazinfo.kz
Contact Name: S.A. Musaeva, Vice-President and Associate Professor, Taraz College of the Humanities

The Foundation for the Support of Youth Education
was founded in February of 1995. Its primary goals are as follows:

• The education of Kazakhstan's youth and their patriotic, environmental, and humanitarian upbringing.
• Cultivating creativity in the spheres of science and technology, music, and art.
• Work in the area of cultural education. 
• Protecting the rights, freedoms, and legal interests of youth and members of the Foundation.
• Organizing talent competitions and recreational programs for youth.
• Material encouragement for gifted schoolchildren and college students, as well as winners of academic competitions, Olympiads, exhibitions, and other events.
• Participation in charitable activities, in the light of widespread unemployment and poverty, particularly among youth.

Past activities by the Foundation include the Brain Ring, an inter-school academic competition; organizing student exchanges with Russian universities; seminars on environmental education and the publication of a book entitled "Games as a Means of Environmental Instruction and Education"; and a charity exhibition and sale for the works of young local artists. Students' works were also displayed at the "Ideas and Goods" fair in Switzerland in 1998. Current projects include the creation of a network of five neighborhood clubs, housed in facilities provided by the Taraz city government, that provide educational and psychological support for low-income children, and an Anti-Poverty Program, carried out through the same clubs, that will train unemployed parents and their children together in vocational trades (woodworking/sculpting, the manufacture of household items, folk art) and help provide jobs for them. Future plans include the expansion of the Foundation's activities to include anti-drug and alcohol work.

The Foundation for the Support of Youth Education is currently seeking opportunities for both support in kind (especially clothing for low-income families) and financial support--in particular, for the outfitting of a woordworking shop and other facilities for the new Anti-Poverty Program--as well as the opportunity to participate in local and international conferences and symposia. Past collaborators include the Soros Foundation-Kazakhstan and ISAR. 

The Foundation exists under the aegis of the Taraz College of the Humanities, which provides instruction in art, music, and education and teacher training for students from the ages of 17 to 20. The College of the Humanities, in turn, is seeking opportunities for short-term and long-term teacher exchanges with similar institutions abroad, as well as exchange opportunities for its students. 

Last updated:    March 2001

For further information on Central Asian NGOs see also Civil Society in Central Asia (CCSI, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of Johns Hopkins University, and University of Washington Press, 1999).

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