Children's Fund of Kyrgyzstan

Originally established in 1988 as a branch of the Soviet Children's Fund, the Kyrgyzstan Children's Fund continues its work today as an independent, non-governmental organization. The Fund has four goals: to find new ways to improve living conditions for the children of Kyrgyzstan; to publish information on issues concerning children; to assure that the rights of children are protected; and to work with government agencies and international organizations.

The Kyrgyzstan Children's Fund has operated a children's shelter (called the Ak-Jol Center) in Bishkek since 1996. The shelter provides homeless children with food, medical care, and school programs and attempts to place them in foster homes or return them to their families whenever possible. The Fund also sponsors various programs that provide aid to handicapped children and the children of shepherds.

One of the Fund's current endeavors is the "Social Project Information Network," or Project SPIN, which is supported by UNICEF, Mercy Corps and Counterpart. The goal of Project SPIN is to establish a network by which local NGOs, government agencies and international organizations could share information. Fund staff visited more than 200 NGOs in Kyrgyzstan gathering information to create the SPIN database. SPIN also published a "Humanitarian Assistance Directory" for use by international organizations. The directory provides descriptive profiles of NGOs in Kyrgyzstan, as well as information on available resources and governmental institutions.

A print version of much of the information contained in this Central Asian Third Sector Organizations section can be found in Civil Society in Central Asia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999).

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Last updated:    November, 1998