Child sponsorship update from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Update for child sponsors from the SOS Children's Village Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan from December 2008

Dear friend,

Once again it is a great honor for us to greet you as a precious friend of our big international family. Thank to your generous heart we are still functioning and our orphan, abandoned children feel cared and loved.

We would like to share with you a little about the life in SOS Children’s Village Bishkek, its events and developments of this year. Unfortunately, there are 15 more children have come from Talas and Issyk-Kul regions to our village, but we are so happy that with the help of our friends like you we can help them and let them have home and family, bright future and opportunities to realise their life goals. The main thing is that now they hope for better and think that so on everything in their life will be okay.

There are 109 orphan and abandoned children from different regions of Kyrgyzstan in SOS Children’s Village Bishkek at present time. 30 of them are girls and 38 are boys.
18 youngsters moved to SOS Youth Facilities. It is one of the steps of children’s care.

SOS Youth Facility helps them to become more responsible and learn for independent life. One of the conditions of living in Youth Facilities is the youngsters have to work on a part-time job. Youngsters often visit SOS Children’s Village and are always in contact with SOS mothers. Two of our little ones are happy going to the SOS Nursery School. They really enjoy it.

Children studying hard

Our kids keep going to different schools, universities, and courses and improving their creative abilities. It is a big happiness for all of us to see our children growing and developing their talents studying in different local centers of art and creative work dancing, singing and playing on different musical instruments like piano, komuz (the national instrument) and guitar.

One of our girls from SOS children’s Village really enjoys going to the Choreography School. She has been dancing for years already. Her trainers say that she is going to be a great ballerina and her SOS mom is truly proud of her. She is doing really well in reaching her life goal.

Three of our youngsters got into different universities. Many of our kids graduated from professional lyceums and work in different work places of our country. Seven youngsters entered technical schools this year and four got into professional lyceums.

Our talented kids are never tired of getting more and more education.

Every year there are trainings for SOS youngsters on all kinds of topics so they can solve their problems themselves and understand the things that nobody can tell them in their life. Besides those leaders, educators, the teachers, and the psychologist are always ready to help youngsters whenever they have problems in everything.

Taking part in activities

Our children can not only study hard, but also rest well too. Many of our kids went to Issyk-Kul Lake, swam in the lake and got sunburn, energy for the whole year. As you know 95% of Kyrgyzstan is mountainous. There were organised excursions for children; they had fun playing different sport games like volleyball, football on green grass, and also eating delicious food. Each year the football team of our village plays in the “Global Peace Games” tournament with other teams of Bishkek city. Unfortunately, this year the tournament was not held due to the refusal of other teams they used to play with. Our team was really sad about it.

The education in the nursery school is based on the mix of programmes by “Step by step” and the government. What special about the teaching process of nursery school is the education quality with additional components: teaching English language, helping the children with the speech problems, and also there is education on aesthetic. This year in our nursery school there were held different health and edutainment activities: planning, skits, competition, holidays, and open classes. Our nursery school kids love fairy tales, which is why the educators organised for them skits on favorite fairy tales. All of us had fun watching them doing great job on acting the heroes of fairy tales. Particularly, we have to point out that the hall is beautifully decorated every time we have activities. One of SOS-mothers always participates in the decoration process. Her artistic subjects always have been glamorous, kind and alive. The parents always admit that there is a favorable atmosphere among educators and children in our nursery school. The visitors of our nursery school, communicating with the kids, always leave the educators with gratitude and value and thank the charity mission of SOS Children.

The SOS village likes very much to celebrate all kinds of holidays of different seasons. We had wonderful celebration of the Teachers’ Day. All SOS mothers, SOS aunts, nursery school, the office staff and the children were involved in this wonderful event. Every family prepared delicious food as “borsok”, “plov”, and of course “besh barmak”, the Kyrgyz national food. There were invited guests from the SOS School, National Office, and youth facilities. All were happy to visit us and congratulate the teachers with the professional holiday. Our children in their turn made happy our teachers with their wonderful dancing and singing. Our pedagogue organised for our children games with many presents. All of us had tons of fun. Our teachers got energised for the whole year in their very hard work with children.

Once more on behalf of all the children, mothers, and co-workers, we would like to thank you very much for your priceless support to bring Hope, Joy and Happiness in the lives of many children. Finally, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

Mr. Kantemir Saalaev
Director