Gift Personal Mentors to 100 Orphans in Kazakhstan

This time period has been tough both for mentors and mentees. The lockdown and other restrictions became more severe, so participants of our project didn’t get any chance to meet in person with each other.

The children had to return to closed institutions again without any opportunity to socialize and this greatly affected them emotionally. Some mentors, who constantly take COVID tests due to their jobs, even managed to come to the territory of orphanages in order to talk through the fence (in compliance with the requirements for maintaining distance) and support their mentees.

If some of the wards and mentors had the opportunity to communicate online, then a large number of children are still waiting for their mentors. In this terms, we have revised the approach to training candidates for mentors and launched an online school for mentors. As a result, we trained 18 mentors in Atyrau, who are now preparing to meet their younger friends. In total, during the reporting period, 220 applications for participation in the project were received and 175 candidates applied to the online school in 10 cities of Kazakhstan. 

Although were able to establish processes with recruiting and training of new mentors in the current difficult situation, there are still difficulties in meeting with children and organizing new matches. At the moment, the country is still in quarantine. In some cities (Almaty, Astana), there is an opportunity to meet with the mentee in the case of an up-to-date certificate on COVID. So, one of the mentors visited her ward in an orphanage and even baked a cake.

In order to keep up the interest to the project , as well as support mentors, we organize live broadcasts on Instagram with psychologists and current project mentors. These activities receive excellent feedback and the resources  to stay positive. The link can be used to view the saved live streams

Links:

• Live stream on instagram with actual mentor