AKF and the World Bank have partnered to support youth through community engagement efforts in the Kyrgyz Republic. Three projects are underway through this initiative: the Community Engagement and Social Accountability initiative, the Livelihood for Youth project, and Engaging Communities for Better Schools in the Kyrgyz Republic project.
Read on to learn more about each project.
Community Engagement and Social Accountability
The Community Engagement and Social Accountability (CESA) initiative will pilot an innovative youth-led approach to community mobilization and social accountability. The project includes a range of activities that work to ensure that:
- communities, particularly youth and marginalized groups, are actively engaged in selecting poverty-focused project interventions;
- investments in social and economic infrastructure are those that have been most highly prioritized by communities; and
- all members of the target communities are provided with the information, facilitation, and capacity building necessary to make decisions that are needs-based, and inclusive of women, vulnerable, and poor households.
CESA is implemented in partnership with the Community Development and Investment Agency (ARIS), and is a three-year initiative funded with Multi-Donor Trust Fund managed by the World Bank. This project aims to complement the series of energy, social and economic infrastructure investments in communities through the CASA 1000 Community Support Project (CSP) funded by the World Bank.
Livelihood for Youth
The Livelihood for Youth (L4Y) project will prepare youth for the labor market by developing their entrepreneurship and job-related skills to meet the needs of local labor markets. The project will also support youth-centric value chains and create new opportunities for micro and small enterprises.
The L4Y project will focus on skills and livelihoods identified through the community mobilization process facilitated by CESA. The project will also strengthen economic infrastructure investments, such as fruit processing units and IT training centers, that were identified through the CESA initiative and financed by the World Bank’s CSP program. LY4 is a four-year project funded by the Japanese Social Development Fund administered by the World Bank.
Engaging Communities for Better Schools in the Kyrgyz Republic
The Engaging Communities for Better Schools in the Kyrgyz Republic will improve the accountability and responsiveness of teachers and schools and the performance of students in the most needy districts of the Kyrgyz Republic. AKF will use inclusive approaches to citizen engagement to work towards achieving this goal. As part of this project, AKF will:
- develop and strengthen school-level Boards of Trustees (BoTs) and Associations of BoTs in 359 schools as a platform for citizen engagement;
- build the capacity of citizens to access, analyze and make use of timely, comparative, and user-friendly (budget and performance) information in order to engage effectively with schools ; and
- introduce a citizen-led accountability mechanism (such as community scorecards) for ongoing engagement and joint action at the school level.
The project will also provide micro-grants to BoTs to implement priority actions identified through the community scorecard and BOT-led action planning process.
Engaging Communities for Better Schools in the Kyrgyz Republic is a three-year project funded with Japanese Social Development Fund administered by the World Bank.