Rather than try to become specialists ourselves, we learned how to access
specialists, mainly through STLI, and taught communities how to do so as
well. We kept emphasizing the need to assess the situation yourself
first before calling in a ‘specialist’, which might mean spending
money unnecessarily. We also realized that the skills we taught community
members were not so high level. For example, our team, as non-medical people,
would try to teach and demonstrate preventative health measures in such
a way that the non-medical village people who learned from us could pass
the techniques and information on to other non-medical people, such as
their neighbors.
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New Furniture
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New school furniture was enabled by a project Osh CDP ran with the teachers
and the students in three villages in which all were successful. During
the program, Osh CDP worked with the teachers and students to find the
causes for the lack of school furniture, one of which was the lack of
care by the students. Once this was determined in Achy, the teachers
and students, with the Osh CDP team, started a small competition between
the classrooms for who could best maintain the furniture. Shown here
is a picture of the winning class being presented with a certificate.
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As part of STLI’s commitment to development, local staff has been trained
not just to do CD work, but to lead. In September of 2005, a local worker
assumed leadership of Osh CDP. In January 2006 the project, now totally staffed
and led by national workers, became an independent NGO. This move to a local
NGO was accomplished almost entirely by the local staff. It
was a steep learning curve for them,
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but they rose to meet the ongoing challenges.
Becoming a local NGO has meant not so much ‘independence’ as ‘interdependence’ for
Osh CDC. By working in partnership with other organizations, Osh CDC can
remain focused on doing what it does best—basic community development—while
enlisting the strengths of other organizations. In
the past this sort of interdependence has been almost entirely within STLI,
but new partnerships are opening up, in which Osh CDC both learns from and
contributes to other organizations. Of course we also face new challenges
as the NGO develops, especially in terms of organizational development.
Osh CDC is currently assessing a potential donor and new project, which
would mean a move to a multi-project NGO.
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Classroom Maintenance Contest
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Training for Other Organizations
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As Osh CDC faces the future there are many unknowns, challenges and risks,
but they are building on a firm foundation of experience and openness
to learn and innovate. Development of people remains the focus—developing
staff so as to better serve and develop community members. We are confident
that with these projects there will be a better future for the people
of Kyrgyzstan.
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STLI * P.O. Box 1607, Cypress, CA 90630 * Phone 714-761-1210 * www.stli.org
History of Osh Program:
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