On May 20, representatives of more than 60 NGOs from around Kazakhstan converged to discuss, develop, and accelerate solutions to improve the effectiveness of organizations providing social services to impoverished youth and children. The conference entitled “Improving the Delivery of Social Services for Children and Youth from Vulnerable Groups” was attended by representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Interior, and the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection. The morning session provided like-minded professionals the opportunity to discuss several issues facing their work, including:
* Key issues which affect the ability of NGOs to deliver social services to ICY were identified and discussed;
* Understanding and partnership between NGOs and other stakeholders on social service delivery was built ;
* Knowledge on best practices, tools, current (and planned) legislative framework related to increasing effectiveness of social service delivery, improving quality of services and measuring the impact of social service was shared, exchanged and disseminated.
The discussion afforded social service providers and their counterparts in the government an opportunity to share with each other their needs and expectations, and to seek opportunities for cooperation with respect to improved service provision.
Small group sessions in the afternoon gave participants a chance to focus more specifically on their area of interest. Participants chose to attend small group discussions on working with disabled children, early childhood development, family risk factors, and working with youth. Given the great number of conference participants, the small group forum gave a larger number of participants an opportunity to actively participate in the discussion. The results of these sessions were summarized and shared with the larger group at the conference’s closing.
Text of the conference proceedings are available in Russian here [7].
