MINI-GRANT REPORT FROM DUSHANBE, TAJIKISTAN

 Healthy Lifestyle and Debates, Farkhod Ulugov, Trainer and Coordinator for NGO Public Union “Youth 21”, shares the latest developments in his project.

"My mini-grant project is going very well. I will say that our student participants are working in co-operation and support with the national Committee of Youth Affairs. The Committee really liked our plan about a petition on prohibition of smoking in public places.

I also have very exciting news! The Ministry of Education with Unicef asked our organization to expand our project to the rural areas, and other regions of Tajikistan. I mean to expand the program to schoolchildren in 100 schools of Tajikistan. The Ministry has assigned 22 hours of teaching for each school in the coming academic year for these purposes. The goal is:

1. To learn and spread knowledge about “Healthy Lifestyle and Life Skills” through debates;
2. To make available opportunities to volunteer to spread this message.

In addition to our manuals on "Healthy Lifestyle," we also are including a new curriculum on "School Self-Government" which will be implemented together with our partner NGO "Triumf". This NGO has been working with the US Embassy of US in this field.

We are going to use our five action plans we developed as Legacy’s mini-grant project as samples for those 100 schools. I should also emphasize that by 2010, all the schools of Tajikistan would have to bring these curriculums into their schools. The project will be financed by Unicef Tajikistan.