Uulzhan

SUSI 2017

Participants in Uulzhan's mentorship group 

As a talented high school graduate from a low-income rural area, Uulzhan received a full merit scholarship to attend the American University of Central Asia. While she was academically prepared, she still struggled with the transition to university life and living in the capital city. “Coming straight out of a school from a village with no proper experience to a completely new challenging environment…most of the times students (like me) feel overwhelmed and lost. As an alumna who’s gone through the hardships of that pivotal year, I wished I had a mentor.”

Motivated by her challenging experience, Uulzhan set out to match freshman entering her university from low-income rural areas with mentors from similar backgrounds. She recruited a few peers from her scholarship cohort to create a comprehensive year-long mentoring program to provide academic and personal development support to help new students succeed in their first year at university.  In the first semester, mentoring activities focused on academic support to help students excel in their winter exams. The second semester focused on personal development. They invited young and successful professionals to give motivating and inspiring guest lectures.

After two years of successfully implementing this mentorship model, Uulzhan and her fellow mentors intend to expand the program to work with younger children living in remote areas of Kyrgyzstan. Over a  six month period, they will visit them and conduct workshops on self-development, academic opportunities, and organize guest lectures and help them shape their goals and monitor their progress.

Uulzhan writes, “From this experience, I learned that everyone can make a big difference in society and exercise leadership. Surely, it is not always easy... But the most important thing in civic engagement is having a vision of the future outcomes of your actions and persistently and vigorously making it alive. In the beginning, I could not believe that my teams’ hard work would bring so much impact on students’ lives. Successfully the combination of my organizing teams’ knowledge, skills, and motivation [allowed] more than 200 students and more than 50 mentors, and guest lecturers [to be] involved in this project in 2 years.”