Youth Innovation Center in Tepe-Korgon

In June 2022, the Demilge Innovative Youth Center was opened in Tepe-Korgon village district of Osh oblast – so far the only place created for the development and recreation of young people.

This center has become a response to the growing number of unemployed youth, early marriages and a large number of family conflicts taking place in the district. Vulnerable youth, including 60% of women, become isolated, poorly integrated in their community, have no sense of belonging to something, do not participate in the decision-making process and, as a result, may be exposed to radical views.

The opening of the Center for Youth is the goal of the Demge Dem initiative, implemented by the Zhash–Niet Public Association together with village administration body with the support of the Living in Peace project.

The Center supports young people in gaining access to educational, medical, psychological and social services, there is a fully equipped computer lab, a sewing workshop, a healthcare room, as well as astronomer and chemist rooms, who are attended with excursions by school students from all villages of the district with interest, as they do not have the opportunity to get this knowledge at school.

Now the Center offers free first aid courses, tailoring and sewing courses and IT courses:   "Now 15-20 students are training in each class, mostly girls – we also work with girls who need help: these are divorced girls who need a job, those who have been abused or harassed/attacked and others. After the completion of the project, together with village administration body, we want to continue the operation of the Center, we plan to introduce at least a minimum fee for courses to support the Center and trainers. Our goal is to teach our students to earn with their labor, to give them basic skills useful for working for themselves," says Nurgul Karaeva, the Head of the Demge-Dem project.

An initiative group consisting of representatives of the village administration body, young activists, mediators, aksakals (council of elders), as part of the work of the Innovation Center held a seminar on social design, and then a competition of civil campaigns: everyone could develop a socially significant campaign and receive a small amount of funding. Among the large number of applications submitted, 9 small offline campaigns and 5 online campaigns were selected, the amount of funding is quite small – from 20,000 to 30,000 KG soms.

For example, the organizers of the Tazalyk campaign aimed at the cleanliness of the Tepe-Korgon, purchased trash bins to install on the streets. "Such a simple civic initiative is already a novelty for the Aravan region," Nurgul Karaeva notes.

Sarbinaz Isamidinova, a school student who wrote a project to maintain cleanliness at school, notes: "We wrote that we need some items to keep the school clean. We were provided by everything and it helped a lot. It was our first small initiative, and we are glad that we succeeded."

Solving the issue of women's employment

The campaign of mediator Muratzhon Makhmudov is aimed at creating a mini-greenhouse to create jobs for unemployed rural women - now the process of preparing the greenhouse itself is underway:

"The women in our village do not have the opportunity to go far to work. We will provide jobs and create decent conditions and wages to ensure their employment. With God’s help, when we finish the greenhouse, we will buy seeds, sow vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers, and in three or four months, in March, we will start selling them," Muratzhon shared.

Equal education for everyone

On the basis of the Center, young activists conducted a training for girls and women in the field of computer literacy – participants were taught the basics of using a computer, video communication and the Internet.

"Within the framework of the Demge Dem project, we took part in many seminars, which prompted us to create our own small training project. We have created a team and are solving the problem of teaching young people to work at a computer. Our initiative won the competition, and now we can teach computer skills to all willing," says Tazhikhon, a participant of Demge-dem project.

First aid skills are a benefit for everyone

Dilnazokhan Yusupova, the organizer of the civil campaign to teach first aid skills, says: "We train women and girls in the first aid center created in an Innovative Training Center. We are glad that our idea was selected among 26 projects. We were provided with a thermometer for measuring body temperature, a tonometer for measuring blood pressure, a glucose meter for measuring blood glucose, a device for measuring heart rate, a dispenser for medicines, a device for drip administration of medicines. Thanks to this, we contribute to the education of young women and teach them how to use all this at home. The problem of our community is a lot of divorces due to early marriages, and our main goal is to teach girls to encourage them to continue their studies at universities after school, to give them useful skills."

Disease prevention

Manzura Suerkulova, a teacher at the Zhyldyzcha kindergarten, came up with the Clean Hands campaign. "Our task is to observe hand hygiene in the prevention of infectious diseases in kindergartens. There were no proper conditions for hygiene due to the lack of hand wash basins on the street in the Zhyldyzcha kindergarten. Therefore, infectious diseases arose among children. With the help of our initiative, washbasins were installed. Now favorable conditions for hand washing have been created for 110 children in kindergarten, and now children wash their hands with clean water and soap," says Manzura.

According to Nurgul Karaeva, the Head of the Demge-Dem project, civil campaigns aimed at cohesion, promoting civil society, strengthening the role of women in the family and society were funded.

"At the beginning of the project, we heard from many men: "Well, what do you want to prove with this? Why do you do all this for women if men don't participate in it anyway!", while women, on the contrary, were very actively involved in our activities. Previously, the girls would not have been allowed in, but now they have a great interest. If we compare "before" and "after", people did not believe in this idea, they were afraid of condemnation in social media, and now there are much more proactive and involved women."

This work was done by the Zhash Niet Public Association within the framework of the Demge-dem initiative, which is aimed at creating a creative multifunctional youth space in order to implement the main activities of the youth policy of the village administration body. The initiative is funded by the Living in Peace project.

International Alert, together with the Development Policy Institute and the National Mediation Center, is implementing the Living in Peace project. The project is being implemented with the support of the European Union.