 |
|
|
IREX is an international nonprofit organization providing leadership and innovative programs to improve the quality of education, strengthen independent media, and foster pluralistic civil society development.
Founded in 1968, IREX has an annual portfolio of $50 million and a staff of over 500 professionals worldwide. IREX and its partner IREX Europe deliver cross-cutting programs and consulting expertise in more than 50 countries.
Latest News & Highlights
Bringing Messages of Peace to the Border
«I am a citizen of Kyrgyzstan,” Suhrob Ergashev, an ethnic Tajik, says proudly when asked about his nationality. He is a history teacher in Anda-rak, a small community near the Kyrgyz-Tajik border, where teenagers more frequently leave home for low-wage migrant work than for univer-sity. Yet Ergashev’s students now dialogue with their community through Drama Clubs he founded with help from USAID’s Youth Theater for Peace (YTP) program, which promotes community-level conflict preven-tion using a participatory theater methodology called Drama for Conflict Transformation (DCT).
|
A Batken region teacher uses theater to engage youth in community dialogue
|
|
 |
|
|
“I was nervous to go to the Kyrgyz-language school at first, because I was afraid of how my students would be received. But our performance created dialogue and many of the youth are still friends.”
|
|
|
— Suhrob Ergashev, teacher from Andarak, a Tajik-speaking community in Batken region
|
|
Ergashev brings a quiet but noticeable energy to any room; his students clearly adore him. It’s hard to believe he wasn’t always this engaged in his community. “Forum Theater has changed me as a human being,” Er-gashev reflects, referring to the DCT methodology he was trained to facili-tate. “Before the training, I didn’t know how to connect with youth. I would go to my history lesson and then go home. I was reserved. Now I have 100% attendance in my class and I communicate with my students’ par-ents.”
The Andarak Drama Club presents monthly Forum Theater plays, includ-ing a recent performance at the top Kyrgyz-language school in the area. “I was nervous to go there at first because I was afraid of how my students would be received – they are Tajik speakers,” Ergashev recalls. “But the performance created dialogue and many of the youth are still friends.” The Andarak theater group is one of 22 Drama Clubs established under the YTP program in Kyrgyzstan that have reached over 9,000 people with plays on local conflict issues.
Ergashev has big plans to continue engaging his community’s youth through theater. He’s starting an NGO that will serve as a legally regis-tered fundraising base for DCT projects, and applying for a grant through YTP to train more teachers and students and help them start their own drama clubs. “Forum Theater has changed me to become more involved, and more open,” Ergashev says. There is no doubt his experience and community work will inspire others. When a group of YTP youth partici-pants is asked to describe the qualities of a leader they admire, hands shoot up: “We want to tell you about our teacher, Suhrob.”
|
|
|
Coming Up:
|
