Getting to Know Your International Contacts

Since I have not yet received a response from my international contacts, I chose to go on the website of the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre’s page (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/), and learn about childhood poverty in Kyrgyzstan.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the shift to a market economy has led to a substantial increase in poverty in Kyrgyzstan.  A range of services which protected children and promoted their development before the collapse of the Soviet Union has disappeared. Since the country’s independence and adaptation of the shock economy, there has been a pronounced increase in child labour with children working in agriculture, trading, as market porters, in cafes, as domestic servants, collecting rubbish and scrap metal for resale and begging. Approximately 50 per cent of child workers do not attend school.

The current situation could lead to cycle of poverty where today children will become parents of poor children with no insight into children development. It appears that the current government recognizes these challenges and has developed long term solution based on macro economic development. Two main kinds of initiatives are expected to help reduce childhood poverty. The National Poverty Reduction Strategy (NPRS) stresses that macroeconomic growth is expected to be the main means of poverty reduction, improving the situation of children by improving that of their families. The other set of initiatives is focused on individual children by providing material or practical and social / emotional support to such children and families.