BOTA Foundation

Organizational Development: IREX and Save the Children provide organizational development guidance and capacity building technical assistance to the BOTA Foundation to ensure Kazakhstan’s seamless inheritance of the foundation in 2013.

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT): CCTs offer financial incentives to encourage and enable households struggling below the poverty line to access services that will improve their children’s development and welfare. In addition to meeting eligibility requirements under the Poverty Means Test (PMT), Beneficiaries must meet specific characteristics including being a mother who is pregnant and/or lactating, a child age 4-6 who needs early childhood development (ECD) services, or a child age 4-16 years who is disabled.

Social Service Grants and Technical Assistance: Large and small grants are awarded to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to improve the availability and quality of social services. There are multiple grant categories—such as community planning grants, social service grants, and systems improvements grants. Grant support targets ECD, improving access to education and education outcomes, promoting youth opportunities and prevention of risky behaviors, and promoting access to services for children with disabilities. Simultaneously, technical assistance is offered to the social-service community through private meetings and public forums to bring to the forefront issues that must be resolved to substantially improve child welfare in Kazakhstan.

Tuition Assistance Grants: The Foundation provides need-based grants to young people in Kazakhstan for study at universities and colleges in Kazakhstan, similar to the US Federal Pell Grant Program. The grants target promising young people who have both financial need and the potential to succeed in college or university, using a proxy means test to verify need. Instead of simply viewing income, the test examines expenses and other factors to more accurately assess economic status. Grant recipients contribute 20 hours of service to their communities each year and have volunteered in a variety of settings, including orphanages and foster-care centers, schools and nonprofit organizations. Grant recipients develop life skills through supplemental workshops organized twice a year, focusing on topics such as critical thinking and problem solving.