Soros Foundation Kazakhstan Announces the split of its Youth and Media Support Programs

ALMATY, 1 August 2011.  From August 1, the Youth and Media Support Program has been divided into two separate programs: Media Support and Youth Initiatives. SFK’s Board of Trustees made the decision following an assessment of the pilot Youth Initiatives component of the program.

SFK has become the first donor in the country to work with young people in a comprehensive series of initiatives, focusing on their needs and their interests and seeing them as a source of new ideas as well as active partners to be involved in the public discussion of important social issues. The Youth Initiatives Program’s mission is to increase civil activity and engagement among Kazakhstan’s young people and to facilitate their involvement in building a tolerant society. Among the most popular projects implemented by the Program in 2010 were the Citizen project (improving civil education among schoolchildren), the Go Ahead and Young Researchers mini-grants, ZhasCamp 2010 (an informal youth conference), the Week of Kindness initiative, and the Open Your Eyes competition for public service social promotion.

The Media Support Program was originally launched in 1996. Over the fifteen years the program has run, SFK has provided over US $4 million for the professional development of journalists, the independent media and to support non-government organizations promoting freedom of speech in Kazakhstan. The program’s ongoing mission is to build the capacity of the country’s media community to promote pluralism, tolerance and freedom of speech in Kazakhstan.