In Uzbekistan, by far the most populous country in Central Asia with just under 32 million inhabitants, more than a third of the population are children under the age of 18. The unemployment rate among young people who have just completed their education is particularly high. In this regard, the SOS Children's Villages organisation in Tashkent has launched a funding programme that has been funded by the Wilo Foundation since 2019 and is intended to improve career entry opportunities for socially disadvantaged young people and thus open up future prospects for them.

The programme supported 23 young people in two youth facilities in total and, in addition to educational courses such as language lessons, also offered them seminars on the subjects of “communication”, “career planning” and “life skills”. On the occasion of the corona pandemic, the young people, together with the employees of SOS Children's Villages, created twenty different videos and animations on a variety of social topics, which were published in the specially developed Telegram channels "Together we are stronger" and "MediAid4U" and thus provided reliable information about the corona pandemic, its mental and health consequences, isolation and youth unemployment.

Oliver Hermes, the President and CEO of the Wilo Group and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Wilo Foundation, sees the encouragement of disadvantaged children and young people as being of fundamental importance to society: Recognising personal strengths and talents equals a sustainable investment in the future of our society. " Evi Hoch, Foundation Board of the Wilo Foundation, adds: “In our international commitment, we consciously rely on a particularly experienced institution such as SOS Children's Villages around the world. This is especially valuable when it comes to supporting young people. A long-term partnership also creates the opportunity to jointly develop supporting activities and to enable encounters like in 2018 in Belgrade, when we invited a group of SOS Strong Youngsters to the rowing world cup there, where they also could catch in action the Germany-Eighth from Dortmund funded by us and get to know the national coach and managing director at the workshop on site."

Background:

Last year, the Wilo Foundation and SOS Children's Villages informed the world about their 10-year donation partnership. Their joint commitment to particularly disadvantaged children and young people should once again bring the important social issue of youth welfare to the fore. As one of the first donation projects in its young 10-year history, the Wilo Foundation supported the SOS Children's Villages worldwide for the first time in 2011 in line with its sponsorship motto “empowering young people”. Since then, ten SOS Children's Villages have been supported with donations of over 300,000 euros in various parts of the world, in Africa, India, Southeastern Europe, Russia and currently also in Uzbekistan.