ZhasCamp

10.22.10

I recently attended ZhasCamp, the first youth conference held in Kazakhstan on October 8-10 in Almaty. Young people and representatives of youth NGOs gathered from all over the country, and expert guests from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Kyrgyzstan and other nations were also in attendance.  The camp was a great opportunity to network with other active young people, share skills and experiences, and establish collaboration on projects.  One of the other main goals of the camp was also to discuss the new law on youth policy being passed by the Kazakhstani government, and give youth input to government representatives who attended the conference (although understandably I myself did not participate in this process).  I was also lucky enough to have won one of 48 travel grants to attend the conference, for which I must thank the ZhasCamp organizers as well as Soros Foundation KZ, who sponsored the event.

[Our event sponsors and host...like his shirt! :P]

ZhasCamp lasted three days and was in its very first iteration, though the organizers hope to make it an annual event.  One interesting innovation that was implemented was the idea of “open programming,” in which time was put aside in the schedule for participants themselves to sign up and lead their own sessions.  Although this was a bit chaotic, it did result in a very democratic and participatory conference format.  I signed up to lead what would be a packed time slot with my fellow PCV Michael about volunteerism in America, and prepared another presentation on our organization Dostar and our peer-to-peer model of volunteerism development with my fellow volunteer Zauresh.  We discussed the successful models of volunteerism development at both Peace Corps and Dostar, which I think was beneficial for a lot of the participants.

[Some of our Dostar volunteer team at ZhasCamp]

There were also several interesting “master classes” held throughout the camp on topics including fundraising for youth NGOs, cooperation with local government, social media for youth PR campaigns and once again volunteerism (co-held by some of our own Peace Corps staff!).  These discussions continued after hours in various “thematic evenings” over dinner at venues around Almaty that had agreed to partner with the conference and give discounts to participants.

On the last day of the conference, a “Projects Market” was held in which youth NGOs at the conference could present a project to a panel of judges in competition for one of two 300,000 KZT (2,000 USD) small grants to continue their project in the upcoming year.  16 organizations from around Kazakhstan presented a wide variety of projects, and it was truly fascinating to see all the activities that were happening around the country.  Youth camps for disabled children and orphans, volunteer clubs, a youth entrepreneurship center, etc. etc.  While passivity was listed as one of the "youth problems" to be discussed at the camp, this certainly was not applicable to our fellow conference participants!

Our team went up to present our project: our Summer Youth Leadership School 2010.  They had told us in advance that our project would be judged based on four criterion: sustainability, creativity, previous realization of the project, and that the initiators and beneficiaries of the project were both youth.  Keeping these criteria in mind, we constructed a Powerpoint presentation with only one slide addressing all four points at once.  Then we used the rest of our precious 5 minutes to show a short video clip of our project results that Aziz and I had stayed up putting together the night before: interviews of participants expressing their own gained knowledge and changed perspectives after the camp, and an exciting slideshow of all the pictures from our camp (check it out here on Youtube!). We ended up winning the grant, which was such a huge honor and a confirmation of the great work our volunteers are doing!

[Our volunteer Aziz in excitement as we hear our names being called!]

Overall, I met some really wonderful and interesting people at the conference and discovered many additional opportunities for cooperation and skills-sharing among youth organizations not just in Kazakhstan but all around Central Asia.  Cannot wait to see where some of these new partnerships and ideas take us!