Social Innovation by Natural-Resource Wealth: Kazakhstan’s National Fund for Children

Kazakhstan revolutionized asset-based social policy in January of 2024, when the Central Asian economic powerhouse launched the National Fund for Children, a Child Development Account policy funded by revenues from vast natural resources. On October 16, a panel of distinguished Kazakhstani experts in public policy, law, and social work joined CSD’s Aytakin Huseynli and Li Zou to discuss this pathbreaking social innovation and its potential to revolutionize asset-based social policy in nations with natural-resource wealth.

October 16, 2024
12–1 PM

Brown Lounge
Washington University

Lunch provided

Zhanar Abdykalykova

DIRECTOR
Almaty and Almaty Regional Office of the National Alliance of Professional Social Workers of Kazakhstan

SENIOR LECTURER
Narxoz University

MEMBER
National Prevention Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture, Human Rights Commissioner of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Zhanar Abdykalykova, master in social work, MBA in accounting and finance, is Director of the branch office of the National Alliance of Professional Social Workers in Almaty and the Almaty region, Senior Lecturer at Narxoz University, and member of the National Prevention Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture by the Human Rights Commissioner of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Her areas of professional interest include promotion of social work as an academic discipline and practice through organization of trainings, conferences, advocacy, and empowerment activities, especially in Community Based Inclusive Development (former Community Based Rehabilitation); social work in primary health care – trainings and support of social workers, who support pregnant women and young children; and professionalization of social workers of Kazakhstani NGOs. In her previous career of about 20 years, Abdykalykova worked in IT sales and services at companies like Siemens, Fujitsu, and Microsoft.

Muslim Khassenov

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Maqsut Narikbayev University

OMBUDSPERSON
Young Scholars in the National Academy of Science under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Muslim Khassenov, PhD in jurisprudence, is Associate Professor of the Law School at Maqsut Narikbayev University (Astana, Kazakhstan) and ombudsperson of young scholars in the National Academy of Science under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. He is a member of numerous professional and expert bodies, including the National Commission for women affairs, family and demographic policy under the President of Kazakhstan; the Scientific Council under the Constitutional Court of Kazakhstan; the Experts Club in the Senate Parliament of Kazakhstan; the Civic Chamber in the Majilis Parliament of Kazakhstan; the Advisory body for the human dimension in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan; the Expert Council under the Commissioner for Human Rights of Kazakhstan; and the Chamber of Legal consultants IUSTUS. In addition to serving as an expert of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan (cases in Labor Law), Khassenov has consulted on projects of the International Labor Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, UN Women, and the Council of Europe, among others. A prominent legal scholar, Khassenov has over 100 research publications on such legal issues as labor law, civil law, international public law, environmental law, and human rights.

Aytakin Huseynli

RESEARCH ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
Brown School

Center for Social Development

Aytakin Huseynli, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and the founder of the Azerbaijan Social Work Public Union, the nation’s professional social work organization. Huseynli conducts applied research on social policies to improve well-being of disadvantaged populations, families and children. She also studies social policy and social work in the former Soviet Union countries of Eurasia. Through collaborations with senior policy makers and government officials on design and implementation, Huseynli is pioneering innovative social welfare policies – particularly asset-building initiatives – in oil-, gas-, and mineral-rich countries. Huseynli’s work has been published in numerous journals, including Child Abuse and Neglect, the British Journal of Social Work, Child Indicators Research, and Children and Youth Services Review, and she serves on the editorial boards of the journals International Social Work and International Journal of School Social Work. She is actively involved in global social development through UNICEF, the International Federation of Social Workers, the International Council on Social Welfare, the International Consortium on Social Development, and Social Services in the Context of Conflict Network.

Li Zou
(moderator)

INTERNATIONAL DIRECTOR
Center for Social Development

CO-DIRECTOR
Next Age Institute

Li Zou, MBA, MSW, is International Director at the Center for Social Development (CSD). She leads CSD’s international asset-building work, and directed the five-year large-scale YouthSave Project in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, and Nepal. She has contributed to CSD’s consulting and research efforts on asset-building policy and children’s savings accounts for governments in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and South Korea. Ms. Zou has coauthored articles on asset- building for and guest-edited several international academic journals, and publishes in both English and Mandarin. Also, she is the Co-Director of the Next Age Institute. Part of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, the institute is a partnership between Washington University and leading universities around the world. Ms. Zou holds a master’s in Social Work and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to her current appointment, she worked for CGAP housed at the World Bank on advancing financial access for the poor in China.

Dorian Traube

NEIDORFF FAMILY AND CENTENE CORPORATION DEAN OF THE BROWN SCHOOL AND PROFESSOR
Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis

Dorian Traube is the Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School and a professor. Previously, Traube was a professor in the Suzanne Dworak Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on early child development, home visitation and telehealth solutions for families with young children.

Traube developed Parents as Teachers@USC Telehealth, the first partnership of its kind between a national home visitation model and a university-based telehealth clinic. In doing so, she also established the first virtual home visitation program, offering a reliable home visitation model via video conferencing technology.

This program was chosen as a Named Commitment by the Clinton Global Initiative and was selected the winner of the Gary Community Investment/OpenIDEO Early Childhood Innovation Prize. The program was scaled from offering 1,000 home visits in 2016-2019 to offering 600,000 virtual home visits in 2020. On the workforce development side, the program initially trained 25 home visitors in virtual service delivery strategies and scaled to 12,000 home visitors by 2020. Traube’s research into the telehealth program laid the foundation for a multimillion-dollar award from the Heising-Simons Foundation to make virtual home visitation available nationally during the COVID-19 crisis.

Traube’s research agenda focuses on the utilization of technological solutions to provide early childhood health, education and parent support services. She has expertise in children’s mental health, child maltreatment prevention, family support interventions and home visitation. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Parsons Foundation, Queenscare Foundation, and the Overdeck Foundation. Traube served on the Board of Directors for California Emerging Technology Fund and Child 360.

Traube earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and her master and doctoral degrees in social work from Columbia University. She is a licensed clinical social worker in California and New York.