11.09.2020  08.53

In Beshik-Zhon village of Bazar-Korgon district, there is a preschool educational institution Nagima, where active women work, who have the goal not only to work in an educational institution in rural areas but also to create a profitable business. The initiator of this idea is Mendayim Arzieva, a methodologist of the institution, an experienced teacher, who devoted her whole life to the upbringing and education of children.

Mendayim Arzieva regularly attended seminars and training courses of UN Women. Each lesson to support the economic opportunities and entrepreneurship of rural women was useful and valuable. She shared her knowledge with rural women. She organized 6 Self-Help Groups (SHGs), which brought together about forty active women. Among them were the staff of the Nagima preschool educational institution. During the Soviet Union, this place was a tobacco receiving point with a cellar 3 meters deep for moisturizing tobacco. After the opening of the kindergarten, the cellar was used for household waste and was dangerous for children. Mendayim Arzieva gave the group an idea to build a greenhouse at this place. To realize the idea, they developed a project and, with the help of the Jalal-Abad Village Consulting Service, built a greenhouse. Nowadays they are growing garden greens and making a profit.

“We are learning new farming methods here. Before that, they were busy with work outside the home and did not farm in the garden. Now they began to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, greens. All the year-round we give vitamins to children and prepare salting for the winter”- added Mendayim Arzieva.

It should be noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nagima preschool educators were engaged in growing vegetables in this greenhouse. They were able to attract active women from the village. At the moment, they, not stopping at what has been achieved, participate in various training courses and plan to expand. In addition to all of the above, they indirectly participate in the WPU Erayim project ‘The Introduction of a Combination of Traditional and Modern Approaches to Prevent the Conflict in the South of Kyrgyzstan’, supported by the German international organization Bread for the World. Cooperating with WPU Erayim they expressed their interest in the work of maternal schools.

Baktykan Azhymamatova, Jalal-Abad oblast