Individual Assistance Project

Project Description and Objectives

The objective is to help people in need who are not receiving assistance from the major aid organizations. It was carried out in Osh city and region.

Major Activities Completed and Results

We have helped a total of 30 individuals or families. Many of them were affected one way or another by the violence in June 2010; other people’s needs are unconnected to those events. Most of them have received food products. Some people received an electric hotplate for cooking food and/or heating their home. Two households without a breadwinner got help to pay their electricity bills as their electricity was about to be cut off and it would have left them without heating or light in their homes. Two women received the finances for a sewing machine in order to provide some income for their family after they lost sewing machines in the June events.

Some specific families and individuals who received assistance include:

· A woman who lives with four children in a very small parking lot house. Her only income is through looking after the parking lot. She received food and clothing for both her and her children as well as mattresses and bed covers.

· A middle-aged couple whose 18-year old son was shot early on the first morning of the fighting as he went out to deliver the bread he had baked. Working as a baker from home he was the only breadwinner in the family as the father has a prostheses and has difficulty walking. They received food aid.

· A woman who has been left with 6 children as her husband was lethally injured in the aftermath of the June events. There is no breadwinner in the family. The oldest child is an 18-year old daughter, the youngest an 2-year old son. They received food aid and clothing for the children.

· 17 families with blind people / people with impaired sight living in a ‘kombinat’. They received food aid.

The monetary value of the assistance was small in comparison to larger aid programs. But the main input of the project was detailed on-the-ground work by staff identifying those with true needs that had not been addressed by these larger programs.