SICA Success Stories

Samal Rakhatova studied social media management in university, but she had trouble finding a job in the field upon graduation. She worked other jobs but felt unfulfilled and distanced from her passion. Eventually, she quit her job and became virtually unemployed, until she found Promising Professions for the Future, a project supported by USAID’s Social Innovation in Central Asia (SICA).

SICA’s institutional development experts helped Zahira Begaliyeva and her team revise the organization's mission, which ultimately helped forge new partnerships and attract new donors.

Zhandos Meirmanov hails from Karagandy, an industrial city in the heart of Kazakhstan. Growing up, Zhandos studied in a Kazakh-language school and spoke Kazakh at home. At university, he joined the local debate club. This political science major credits debate for honing his communication, argumentation, and problem-solving skills. The catch? Debates only took place in Russian.

Farrukh Umarov, 29, from Tajikistan, is an Oxford University graduate and the founder of Ilmhona, a tech skills acceleration center. He was born in Istaravshan, a small city in northern Tajikistan, to a family of labor migrants. Farrukh's father, like hundreds of thousands of Tajiks, migrated to Russia when the boy was only 10.

Many people look to warmer seasons with anticipation, excited for all that the good weather has in store—but not Vladislav. As a neighbor to the community landfill, Vladislav balked at the smell brought by warmer weather as heaps of litter baked in the summer sun. “It is really difficult to thrive in these conditions,” he says. “At some point you realize that you need to take action and make a change.”