Happy, satisfied, exited, a bit sad for the end…This is the mix of emotions that we all feel at this moment, when we are slowly finishing and closing the Capacity building project “Challenging Youth through Youth Work!!!”. It’s been 10 months since we started: The first training course in December, followed by the second and third TC in February and March, the two study visit in April and July and the seminar in September…All six activities have been implemented more than successfully. In all six activities, 20 young people from Kyrgyzstan, with the support of trainer’s team from Macedonia, Romania and Kyrgyzstan, have passed through long way of learning, acquiring skills and changing attitudes, so we can proudly say that we have upgraded the youth work in this lovely and very welcoming Central Asian country.

This was the first time the three partner organizations, Volunteers Centre Skopje, OTI from Arad and Youth Human Rights group from Bishkek are organizing a project of this kind- Same 20 participants passing through six carefully designed activities, implemented in a time frame of almost one year, offering possibilities for learning from various areas, connected with youth work. We all, till now, have implemented single project activities (TC’s, youth exchanges and similar) with similar subjects, but this six interconnected activities has been challenge for us as well, but we have proven our capacities for implementation of large scale long term projects, with large effect over countries outside the European continent.

The areas tackled by our project, like principles of youth work, conflict management, PCM, advocacy and lobbying, research in the community, community youth work, youth policies and strategies, sustainable development and recycling and etc., created a solid background for further personal and professional development of the participants and as well, building of the capacities of the various NGO’s and institutions they were representing.

We truly believe that the roots we planted will produce very fruitful results in the future and the youth workers/leaders from Kyrgyzstan that we involved in our project, will have the leading role in the development of the youth sphere and all other areas connected with youth in country. The project had great impact on local and national level in Kyrgyzstan, so we believe that this is just the start of our implementation of activities and initiatives in that country.

We want to thank the partner organizations, OTI from Arad, Romania, and especially the YHRG from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for their support, expertise and invested energy, in the preparation, implementation and follow up period of the project!

See you soon… RAHMAT!!!

By Gjoko Vukanovski