ISSA and Partners Work to Improve Access to Quality Early Education Provisions in Rural Kazakhstan

ISSA and its partners Community Foundation Step by Step (Kazakhstan) and the Comenius Foundation (Poland) recently completed the EU-TACIS-funded project “Civil Society Partnership for Rural Children.”  The overall aim of the project was to support every child’s right to quality education by developing models of child-centered, cost-effective early education services in rural areas in partnership with parents, local educational institutions, and municipal governments. To achieve this aim, ISSA and partners built the capacity of Kazakh civil society by empowering local communities, establishing and improving cooperation with local municipalities, and strengthening the Kazakh non-governmental organization Community Foundation (CF) “Step by Step”, a leading organization in the field of early education and ISSA’s Kazakh member.

Using the experience of the Comenius Foundation’s “Where There Are No Preschools” program and ISSA’s experience throughout the ISSA network of developing outreach programs for parents and schools to reach children who do not have access to formal, high quality preschools, the project partners worked closely with local stakeholders to create new models for early education.  The work included drawing up strategies in each community, with the input and ownership of parents, teachers, school administrations, and local education authorities.  The successful strategies which have been put into operation included creation of a summer camp in one community to prepare children for school, classes on Sundays on the basis of another school, and several other plans.  In addition, teachers in each community were trained to hold ongoing classes for parents to help parents work with their children in the home to better prepare them for school readiness.

In addition to the work in the communities, largely led by CF Step by Step, ISSA worked closely with CF Step by Step to improve the capacity of their Advisory Board, which is helping them to broaden their reach within the country, and will help them to expand the impacts of the project more widely.

For more information about the project, please contact Eva Izsak at eizsak@issa.hu.