Studying in Virginia thanks to Demigeluu Jashtar

Every person has ideas. However, sometimes adults are not ready to listen to the youth because of its lack of life experience and knowledge.

Aidar is an activist at the school-gymnasium #2. Therefore, he always wanted to prove himself outside school life, to contribute to Naryn’s development.

Nevertheless, he did not know how he could get involved more, if he could go to the City Hall with own suggestions and ideas.

Frequent problems between adults and youth stem from mistrust of young people as equal partners. Different research studies all over the world show such stereotypes as young people are lazy, irresponsible and unsociable.

Through his school activism, Aidar wanted to show the determination and readiness of young people to change their environment for the better. However, he had no idea how to become a changemaker in his community outside of the school yet.

USAID’s youth project, known as “Demilgeluu Jashtar,” enables youth to contribute to the social, economic, and civic life of their communities.

After seeing an announcement about the launch of the Demilgeluu Jashtar project, Aidar decided to apply to get more experience in cooperation with local authorities and development soft skills. As a result, he entered the youth initiative group of Naryn.

Aidar took participation in the social makeathon – a forum for socially important projects’ developers, where youth inspired by ideas worked together for 48 hours to solve problems in their communities.

During that event, the initiative group from Naryn proposed a social project related to a co-working center creation, which would gather young people and build their capacity in civil activism. From March 2021, it welcomes everyone to attend sessions on forum theater, debate technologies, chess, etc.

Aidar wrote about his participation in Demilgeluu Jashtar project applying for the FLEX exchange program and PASCH-JUGENDCAMP youth summer school. In his motivation letters he mentioned about skills, knowledge and achievements gained on different project stages.

As a result, he got accepted to both programs. Even though, studies in the USA will be online, he is not upset. As Aidar said, “this is also a new experience”.

The Demilgeluu Jashtar project is funded by USAID and is focused on increasing civic participation of youth and preparing them for the labor market by creating various opportunities.