A pioneering skills development programme is tackling rural poverty at its roots in central Asia through innovative and flexible use of a network of existing higher education institutions. Nearly 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union swept away communal farms – and the system of centrally organised agricultural training and support that went with it – smallholders and livestock herders in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan are being taught basic agronomics in a pilot scheme designed and supported by the European Training Foundation, based in Turin, Italy.


Teaching farmers the right amount and type of fodder to feed cattle, sheep and hens, or simple blood analysis techniques to nip livestock diseases in the bud, is helping move them from subsistence to small and profitable business practices. A home-grown, grass-roots approach that is essentially simple, practical and low-cost offers the chance to create local solutions for local problems without the sort of massive restructuring programmes that foreign donors sometimes deliver with variable results in developing countries.

Funded by the European Union, ETF's Skills Improvement for Poverty Reduction programme – in which a tiny team of foreign experts support local teachers and lecturers employed at established state-run rural vocational education and training colleges at an annual cost of just €80,000 ($120,000) – kills two birds with one stone. Vocational schools in post-Soviet states have long been the poor sister to higher education institutes and regarded by officials as little more than a dumping ground for the poorest students.

The ETF project in this central Asian belt of economically struggling states offers not only farmers but vocational school teachers an opportunity to learn new methods. They are more used to teaching to rigid and outmoded state training plans than creating flexible and interactive lifelong learning outreach programmes. Eduarda Castel Branco, the ETF's Portuguese expert responsible for the three-country poverty reduction project – which has been running since early 2007 in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan – believes rural vocational schools can become motors for change.

"Vocational schools have a very strange mission in post-Soviet countries," said Castel Branco, who studied in Russia during the last days of the Soviet Union. "They are more about social assistance than education. Passive not participatory, their main function is to train young people according to state orders under out-dated curricula with little or nothing for the wider population."

At a time when demand for skills-based, flexible, market-responsive training has probably never been greater in the emerging economies of central Asia, such vocational schools are crying out to be used as open centres for learning. Addressing that challenge – as a way of tackling the wider issues of rural poverty – is a key component of the ETF project.

"Responding to local needs and local questions cannot be done without changes in the vocational school approach too," Castel Branco said. Her work has involved her in education and training projects in countries as diverse as Russia, Jordan, Benin, Angola and Togo – and is a view shared by key stakeholders in the projects.

Ulan Kydyraliev Kochor branch manager of state Ail Bank sees local wealth-creation stifled by the brain drain that laid waste to large sectors of the Kyrgyz rural and wider economy following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991: "We have very few good agricultural and veterinary specialists in this region – after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 'kholkoz' collective farm system many of the best left," Kochor said. "We need to create a new generation of experts. This project helps these people improve their farming techniques and businesses."

The five-month long courses are run on farms in the three countries by lecturers retained for the project. The scheme works by tying a simple curriculum of mostly practical lessons into an agreed raft of small loans of up to $600 to get the graduates of the courses set up in business. Providing credit lines to participants in the project – launched last year in a pilot involving 32 students divided into two training groups involved in arable and livestock farming – is not a major risk for the bank. None of those involved have defaulted on repayments.

The students are all farmers with some experience and a bank consultant helps them create tailored business plans as part of the course. Although no special terms are given for the loans, the 15% interest charged last year compares very favourably with rates of up to 32% charged by commercial banks for similar unsecured credit.

This year's students will be expected to pay 22%, Mr Kydraliev said. Even Kyrgyzstan is not immune from the effects of the US sub-prime crisis and the global credit crunch that has followed, he remarked. The scheme is not only helping local farmers become businesspeople, it is also changing the status and function of the vocational schools involved.

In Kochkor, School No 15 was headed by Temirkul Tilemishov, 62, until he retired last December. He has stayed on as head of the poverty reduction project after 18 years experience as school principal – and before that as boss of a local state freight truck repair and maintenance depot and a stint as a regional Communist party political instructor to his credit. Tilemishov, who also farms a three hectare plot of land himself, brings a wealth of experience and local connections to the job.

"Until this project came along, we did not think about what professional skills might be needed beyond the training we provided. We did not think about whether they would be in demand," he admitted. All that changed when, with central government vocational education and training agency approval, School No. 15 began working with the ETF.

A student-centred approach meant Tilemishov and his staff had to design the modular-based curriculum around the demands of the students, not the school. So they took the lessons to the learners and provided largely practical training down on the farm for their busy students. Traditional 'talk and chalk' classes were ditched in favour of group seminars run as question and answer and discussion sessions.

"We took advice from the student group and changed the study plan accordingly. That had never happened before," Tilemishov said.

The course addressed crucial issues, such as how swiftly to run a blood test on an animal to determine its health, methods for growing top quality cereal crops, effective ways to fatten up livestock or produce rich, creamy milk. The results are impressive and average incomes have more than doubled to $140 a month.

A few dozen better educated farmers earning more money in a region with a population of 59,000 – nearly half of which are involved in agricultural – may not sound like much, but the Kochkor scheme can become an agent for change. Peer review seminars with the graduates of the Tajik and Kazakh projects and Kyrgyzstan's still strong system of clan and village social assistance will help spread the new techniques. And a further 60 students will be trained this year.

"We would like to see such training groups in every village," said Roza Adysheva, deputy head of the regional administration "This sort of training could be organised by our own government structures; if such an approach were applied across the country it would have a major impact on the Kyrgyz economy."

For course graduate Taalaikul Sadbakasova, 42, a farmer in the village of Cholpon, 25 kilometres west of Kochkor who also runs the local kindergarten, the impact is already evident. "Our small farms were fine but we did not always know how to medically treat our cattle, horses and other livestock. We had no idea how to expand our businesses, to develop marketing to make new products," Sadbakasova said.

As a dairy farmer, she had experience in selling milk but did not know how to make and market butter, the sour milk drink kefir or yoghurt. Now she does and this summer, having paid off her $600 loan, she plans to borrow more for an icecream making machine to become the first vendor at her local market to offer farm-fresh icecream.


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