For One Group of Young Kyrgyz Leaders, Leadership Starts with Inclusion

LEAD Mongolia is a World Learning program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is working with some of Mongolia’s best and brightest emerging democracy advocates. To propel the program a step further, World Learning partnered with the International Republican Institute (IRI) to implement the LEAD Alliance, which bridges this Mongolian network with like-minded emerging leaders from Bhutan, Myanmar, and Kyrgyzstan.Young people with disabilities face tremendous challenges in Kyrgyzstan. Across the country, they are needlessly excluded from services and educational opportunities.

“Kyrgyzstan remains one of the most unfriendly countries to live for persons with disabilities,” argues Dildora Khamidova, a human rights activist and LEAD Alliance Fellow from the Kyrgyzstan. Children with disabilities are frequently deemed “unable” of integrating into mainstream schools or are subject to the exclusion of “special schools.”

And while Kyrgyzstan ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1994, the realization of these rights is a long way off, Khamidova says. The country has taken no action to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Khamidova and team of six other fellows took an important step to combat the social exclusion faced by young persons with disabilities in Kyrgyzstan. With the support of the LEAD Alliance, the group launched Leadership Starts with Help, a project to empower young people with disabilities by providing them computer literacy and specialized vocational trainings so that they are better prepared for employment.

In early March 2018, two LEAD Mongolia Fellows, Vyenyera Shyndaulet and Zoljargal Mendbayar, traveled to Kyrgyzstan to support the project and mentor the team. LEAD Mongolia fellows learn how to practice inclusion during their international exchange program, where they meet with academics and activists in the U.S. for workshops on topics such as disability equality and inclusive approaches to program design.

“I became more aware, sensitive, and empathetic toward persons with disabilities after my U.S. exchange trip and so I wanted to share that,” says Mendbayar. “It gave me more passion to stay inclusive in any environment I am in, and call on other people to also consider the special needs of various people in society.”

Leadership Starts with Help is already a step in the right direction for Kyrgyzstan. Though it is a small initiative that has started with 19 young persons with disabilities in Bishkek and Osh cities, the project exposed young participants to important new skills and basic computer literacy — skills that young persons with disabilities are seldom given access to. Ultimately, the project increases their confidence, promotes social integration, and proves that inclusion is possible through small but thoughtful efforts.

Now, the team is working with local IT academies and Ala-Too International University to take over the program in the long-term. “Hopefully, our project will enlarge their window of opportunities,” says LEAD Alliance fellow Ainagul Abdrakhmanova.