Newsletter September-November #1

Front page

"The only joy in the world is to begin"

Starting with this quote from Cesare Pavese, we would like to tell you about what has been going on at our Centre in Almaty, starting from the beginning of the year. It was a start filled with news, since new children with special needs began to attend our professional courses that are held every day at our Centre. The courses are formed of groups of 5-6 young people, which allow the students to create relationships and friendships easily between one another. The small groups also let each child closely follow the teacher, which aids their personal and professional growth.

Over these months, we also had a few volunteers with us from Italy, like Davide and Letizia. They spent time improving the organizational management of our products and developing new sales opportunities. In addition, they took charge of creating the website of the IASP Association. Apart from this, they joyfully participated in the workshops with our children with special needs, such as gymnastics, baking and sewing. We also had several Kazakh volunteers, such as the students from Almaty University of Management, who undertook a seven-week internship at our Centre, helping us market and sell our products and publicising us around their university.

Furthermore, this year we received several visits to the Centre. For example, we welcomed the university students of the Italian language course at Al-Farabi University of KazNU on the occasion of “World Italian Language Week” with the theme of sustainability. During their visit, we learnt about what we can do to contribute to sustainable development, such as recycling materials (billboards, jeans, ties, wood) for the sale of some of our products. One of the students from the university subsequently made a short video which he sent to us, accompanied by a brief comment in which he wrote "the fairly short time I spent there was enough to touch my soul".

These encounters with young people, university students, and graduates, were very useful and insightful because it gave us a chance to look at our work with a new, more open vision, as we welcomed their ideas and observations. In addition, it was a great opportunity for our children with special needs to communicate with others their age who live in different situations and have different experiences, and likewise interesting for university students to learn from them and come across situations they had never before encountered.

The second visit we received was from a few employees of the FlyArystan airline who asked us to make bags for their customers by recycling life jackets used by their company. During the visit, we showed them our workshops for cutting, sewing and woodwork. Then there was a moment of exchange with our children, as the airline staff delivered gifts made by them, followed by a small workshop where we took the first steps together to make a bag out of life jackets. It was an interesting meeting because it showed the possibility of establishing cooperation between two very distant sectors - business and society. We hope that this will be the first of many meetings so that each sector can benefit from the knowledge of the other.

The third visit was from the Apostolic Nuncio of Kazakhstan, Archbishop George Panamthundil, who wanted to learn about our activities and see where we work. For this occasion, our choir, made up of children with special needs, prepared a performance for our guest, followed by a moment of sharing.

We would like to thank all the new people we have met over these past months and those who have supported us for a long time and continue to do so. Your help is truly appreciated! Below we would like to introduce you to our four vocational courses that we run here at the Centre for our children with special needs.

A story

We would like to tell you the story of Muhammed, a 17-year-old boy who used to attend our Centre. We met him when he was much younger, in fact, he was one of the children on the Remote Support project promoted by AVSI ten years ago. His sponsor has always remained very loyal and for that we are very grateful to him. Muhammad had mild cerebral palsy and was initially very withdrawn. This was also because he never attended school and instead received private lessons at home, as is often the case with many disabled children. For this reason, he never had the chance to integrate with other children his age.  

Thanks to the help of a social worker who accompanied him home, Muhammed began attending weekly rehabilitation clinics at our Centre in which were able to do a lot of work with him. In particular, great changes occurred in him when he started gymnastics classes with our teacher Baktiar. Muhammed was monitored individually and given special exercises to help him improve. Over time, he developed a strong relationship with Baktiar, who became like a father to him. In fact, at the same time, his own father had just left the family, leaving his mother alone with several debts.

During these years working with Baktiar, Muhammad changed a lot. In fact, he began to ask more questions about his dreams for the future, and shared his concerns, including about his family. Baktiar was a real guide for him, both on a human and practical level, which also allowed him to start attending group gymnastics classes with other boys. Further to this, last year he began to travel independently using public transport, something he had never done before. Baktiar initially picked him up from a bus stop near the Centre, but after a while he became completely independent.

Nazgul and Baktiar helped Muhammed realise his dream of going to secondary school and getting a scholarship. This is very difficult for children like him who have always received private lessons at home, which followed a condensed syllabus compared to the one taught in public schools. In September, he enrolled at an IT school and is very pleased with his progress. Although, he struggles with some subjects like mathematics and chemistry because of the gaps in his education. In addition, Muhammed is not a confident Russian-speaker since it was not taught to him, so he has some difficulties in completing courses in Russian.

In November, he came back to visit us and told us about two boys in his class with whom he was forming friendships. Also, he travels to school by himself every morning and some days stays there until late for some extra support from his teachers. When he came to visit us, he immediately asked for Baktiar and went with him to teach a gymnastics class with the other children.

We are touched by the change that is happening in some of the young people at our Centre, and this gives us strength and hope to continue this work! We also thank all the sponsors, because without their help none of this would be possible!