When Nursultan, a young boy with cerebral palsy, attends communication courses, his mother, Zhanna, joins him—not to wait while he learns, but to participate in her own skill-building courses. Both mother and son are honing new talents with the help of Batyr, a civic organization and member of USAID’s Social Innovation in Central Asia (SICA) Institutional Development Program (IDP).

Batyr (“Hero”) opened in 2012 to champion the rights of vulnerable groups in Kazakhstan’s Aqmola region. The organization supports people with disabilities and their families through skill-building and social inclusion opportunities. In 2021, Batyr joined IDP, hoping to maximize its performance and develop modern methodologies to help children like Nursultan connect with a broader community. Previously, Nursultan communicated by arranging paper letters to form words. Now, this sociable student is practicing his typing and communication skills through Batyr’s computer literacy training. Using a computer, Nursultan can express his thoughts more readily.

When children are young, they enjoy ample opportunities for development—after-school programs, library initiatives, and the like. But as young people grow, many of these opportunities fade away, replaced by the demands of school, work and family life. Not so for the young minds of Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan.

As a young person herself, Zarina Salimova dreamed of creating a safe space where teens and young adults could immerse themselves in new ideas and pursuits. She enrolled her organization, Jana Urpaq STEP, in the Institutional Development Program (IDP) offered under USAID’s Social Innovation in Central Asia (SICA) program to bring this dream to life.