In celebration of World Children’s Day, UNICEF, together with the civil society organization "Ýeňme" invited children to participate in an inclusive Children’s Fest and take over the United Nations Office. Dmitry Shlapachenko the UN Resident Coordinator in Turkmenistan welcomed children to the UN House by congratulating them on Children’s Day. He emphasized that children are the future of the country and the world, and all that the UN does is to help them have the best future they can. The event helped kids unleash their creativity and emotional intelligence and take action on the Sustainable Development Goals. In addition to being a hands-on learning experience for children, it also brought together the UN staff, young people, and digital influencers to learn, play, dance, sing and have an unforgettable day with children. In the first part of the Fest, through a specially designed roadmap with the activity "Stations", children acted as knowledge travelers visiting interactive sections on emotions, child rights, creativity, environmental protection, and hygiene. The journey let children play different educational and entertaining games in each thematic station. A special child-friendly stand for UNICEF attracted the attention of young change-makers, where they learnt more about the work of UNICEF worldwide and in Turkmenistan. “I really enjoyed a festival today. I especially liked the station where we learned more about the environment, because it is very important to protect our nature” - Arslan, one of the participants of the festival, shared his impressions. UNICEF involved volunteers of "Ýeňme", young SDG Ambassadors and bloggers to facilitate the event and contribute to the celebration of World Children’s Day. “I am very happy to participate in this event. It was very nice to teach children about such important issues in a playful way. I learnt a lot from children as well, because they see things different from adults” – says Lale Bayriyeva, Young SDG Ambassador. Children loved equally the second part of the event with #KidsTakeOver activity. After “filling the bags” with so much new information and fun, children were given a tour of the UNICEF office, where they switched places with adults and had a chance to talk about their dreams, describe the future that they want and have their voices heard. They took over the desk of the UNICEF Representative and conducted an all-staff online meeting. "On November 20, the World Children's Day, we are happy to welcome children to their Fest, open UN doors, and listen to what they say on issues that affect them. World Children’s Day is a reminder to act for children, by children, demanding a better future for them. We will continue working closely with the Governmentof Turkmenistan every day to meet the needs of every child because every day should be World Children's Day," highlights Dmitry Shlapachenko, UN Resident Coordinator in Turkmenistan. "Working for every child everywhere is our mission. UNICEF is on the front line, helping to keep children and families healthy and safe in over 190 countries and territories. On this special day, the World Children’s Day, we are honored to welcome children and young people in the UN House to mark the historic adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child as we work to build a better world for every child," says Mahriban Seytliyeva, UNICEF Turkmenistan Spokesperson. In the run up to World Children's Day, UNICEF also organized the first-ever online Instagram livestream session with youth advocate and digital influencer Aylar Hojamuhammedova. The livestream aimed at spreading the word about UNICEF’s mission and values among youth, positioning digital influencers in Turkmenistan as brand advocates, inspiring the dedicated followers of digital influencers to become UNICEF supporters and highlighting the 75th Anniversary which UNICEF will celebrate in December. The livestream has reached 2577 profiles and hit 1640 views. "Dear UNICEF and Aylar, thank you so much for this interesting livestream. It was a pleasure for me to learn more about the youth-oriented programs of UNICEF. I am looking for further live sessions from you", commented one of the guests of the stream.

She is raising a son alone, and she is coordinator of a new project providing social services for people with disabilities in the city of Ashgabat, in Turkmenistan. She herself has a disability resulting from a musculoskeletal disorder. It makes for a full life, and she is dedicated to her work. “I would spend my last savings for a taxi to never miss a seminar or training I was invited to,” Tanalova says. Her project is part of a public association called Yenme. Only a month after the project was established, it already serves about 23 people with disabilities, helping them live independently. “The turning point in my life was 2015, when I [went to] Kazakhstan, my first-ever trip abroad to participate in a week-long independent living skills training for people with disabilities. I did not expect the training would be facilitated by people with disabilities like me. I was pleasantly surprised to see that people with disabilities can be a part of change,” says Tanalova. She also travelled to Tajikistan in 2017 to participate in another training on developing the potential of women with disabilities. Using all local opportunities to improve her education and develop her ability to live independently as a woman with disability, she started taking part in activities with Yenme. The experience changed her. “I realized I could do more for myself and other people,” says Tanalova, who later took a job with the association. “This position was God’s gift to me to realize my potential of being helpful to other people.” The new project for people with disabilities, funded in part by UNDP in Turkmenistan, is one of 12 new social services piloted as part of a UN-Turkmenistan Joint Programme. While Tanalova’s project targets people with disabilities, other community-based social services are offered for children without parental care, youth at risk, women facing gender-based violence and unintended pregnancy, elderly people living alone, and people with chronic illnesses. The work is carried out by participating UN agencies and their partners in Ashgabat and other regions. “This social service was designed in a way so that people with disabilities would not be institutionalized and so that they would receive necessary support to overcome difficult life situations with support of a personal assistant and realize their own potential,” adds Timur Dosmamedov, Manager of the UNDP component of the UN-Turkmenistan Joint Programme on social services. A person with a disability in need of personal assistance services may apply to Yenme directly or social work specialists may refer to this service. Tanalova and her team assess individual needs together with a potential service user and relevant specialists in such areas as family health or recreation and fitness. Independent living is a worldwide movement of disabled people working for equal opportunities, self-determination, and self-respect. Tanalova’s team at Yenme is piloting how this approach might work in Turkmenistan with services offered by civil-society organizations. The hope is that the success of this pilot project will help decision-makers not only serve people with disabilities but also make them active participants in the process of change. After all, says Tanalova, “If you don’t have a disability, you cannot see or feel all aspects of our daily problems. “We are the only experts of our own situations.”

Mergen Sahetliyev of the city of Ashgabat and his other colleagues from 20 pilot districts throughout the country are making a real difference to families and children by working for or cooperation with 12 new community-based social services provided to different groups of vulnerable people all over the country. Having tertiary qualifications in psychology, Mergen decided to take a different path in his professional growth. He successfully went through the rigid recruitment process to become one of the 45 social workers employed by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population as part of the UN-Turkmenistan Joint Programme on social services. “It would be misleading to assume that what we do as new professionals in social service system does not require any special training or professional development.” says Mergen. “Not only does it require intensive training, but also close professional supervision, especially for those who are new to this area” he adds up, trying to highlight the importance of professionalism in social work. It has never been easy to be the first. Being from the rank of the first social workers in Turkmenistan, who received a series of trainings and professional supervisions, Mergen not only provides social services to families in difficult life situations, but is also an active member of a group of theorists and practitioners of social work services, sharing irreplaceable practical knowledge with the teaching staff of universities thereby contributing to the establishment of the Turkmen vocational school of social work and to the development of educational programs in Turkmen universities in the field of social work. In addition to a three-step course in social work fundamentals, in June Mergen completed a specialized training on supporting families with children in situations of contact or risk of contact with criminal justice. At the end of the course, with the support of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, he and his colleagues from the Center for Social Services under the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population of Turkmenistan organized seminars within the framework of the "Strong Families" program. In the workshops, Mergen worked with parents and children to help them develop their skills for coping with stress, better understanding each other and developing resilience in families to cope with difficult life situations. Dana Aydarova, who participated in the seminars with her 10-year-old daughter, says she and her daughter enjoyed seminars very much and would like to have more activities like this in their community. “We learnt so much about each other. We also learnt how to be patient, started to better understand each other’s needs and learnt how to be tolerant,” says Dana. Mergen and his team made assessment of families and will continues to work with some of them according to the “Treatnet Family” programme. These workshops will be offered to a relatively smaller groups over several months until families’ resilience is developed, and until they overcome life difficulties using their own potentials and available sources in the community. “Today we see the fruits of our hard work” say Mergen, “We held some part of these sessions at “Yenme” public association and some part at the Centers for elderly people and people with disabilities of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population of Turkmenistan.” Annatach Mamedova, UNODC Officer, says: “In partnership with civil society organization and government agencies, UNODC pilots 3 community-based social services and the social service for families in difficult life situations is one of them. Mergen and many other representatives of our national partners participated in service trainings before starting to provide them at community level.” She also added that, other than Mergen’s team, some schoolteachers, narcologists and representatives of two CSOs also formed their own groups to provide similar services at community level. Mergen and his colleagues collaborate with different government and non-government agencies when providing services to these families. “Working with different agencies and institutions in social work is not easy when you are not professionally prepared for that. It took a while for us to develop necessary skills and now most of my colleagues are building bridges between different agencies and social service providers so that beneficiaries would have an opportunity to use all available resources in their communities,” says Mergen. Building rapport both with service users and different service providers helps social workers be more efficient in their work. Despite short period of their work, new social workers proved themselves to be successful in implementing their responsibilities. They gained much recognition by government agencies and CSOs involved in social service provision. Turkmenistan Government widely support new initiatives in improving social service provision system of the country with a new model of social services. The hope is that all new services piloted as part of the Joint Programme will be prove to be useful and people in need will have more choices at their communities to overcome life challenges. This is important for ensuring the rights of all people to improve their life conditions with their own active involvement in decision making and participation in social service provision.

The need to reduce water losses due to canal infiltration and associated land salinization is common throughout the country, at all levels of the water management system, from long distribution lines to individual farms. But the cost and effort required for lining over 40,000 km of supply and drainage canals is enormous. In accordance with the second component of the joint UNDP/GEF project “Energy efficiency and renewable energy for sustainable management of water resources of Turkmenistan” that presupposes increased investment in improvement of water infrastructure in order to reduce water losses, save energy and reduce land degradation, it was decided to focus on demonstration, testing with the subsequent introduction of production processes necessary for manufacturing canal lining materials using local raw materials. The greatest potential for the project in terms of speedy, reasonable and large-scale outcomes on canal lining is with the domestic production that has untapped opportunities for upgrading materials, productivity as well as efficiency gains. The main project partner, the State Committee for Water Economy of Turkmenistan, currently operates a plant in Bezmein, which produces mainly reinforced concrete pipes and canal slabs. UNDP and the State Committee for Water Economy of Turkmenistan (SCWET) have identified a priority area where production at the plant can be efficiently expanded, redirected and made more efficient and cost effective. One lining option that has been empirically tested is the lining of the canal with a 0.5 mm high density polyethylene (HDPE) membrane protected by a 5 cm layer of sand and a layer of hexagonal concrete slabs. The main function of an intermediate sand layer is to protect the membrane from being punctured by hexagonal plates during installation. The advantage of this option is the lower consumption of raw material in the production of the HDPE membrane, and that it can be produced locally in a short time. On the research site of 145 hectares, a demonstration section of a canal in an earthen bed had been lined by means of covering with an anti-seepage polyethylene film and hexagonal concrete slabs. 1. Extrusion Line to produce High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) geomembrane As part of the project, UNDP purchased and installed an extrusion line to produce HDPE membrane at the Bezmein enterprise of construction products of PA Ahalsuwhojalyk of the State Committee for Water Economy. After delivery and installation of the necessary equipment, the Supplier conducted a three-day training for the operators and maintenance personnel of the end-user on the operation, diagnostics, maintenance and minor repairs of the extrusion line and on the production of high-density polyethylene film. During the training, the operation of the equipment was demonstrated, including the production of a trial batch of a polyethylene membrane in the amount of 500 kg. Also, within the framework of the release of a trial batch of products as a part of commissioning process, the best type of local raw materials for the production of geomembranes was determined through testing. In addition to the production line, laboratory equipment for measuring and controlling the quality of products has been supplied, as well as welding equipment for gluing finished polyethylene film into large assembly rolls (depending on the size of the channels). Furthermore, a granulator is installed for processing waste residues. This device can produce polypropylene granules from its own production residues, as well as from secondary raw materials. Using this device allows enjoying the environmental and economic benefits of plastic waste disposal. In addition, the Supplier provided two copies of the operating instructions of the extrusion line in Russian. Recently, the title for the asset has been transferred officially to the end user. During an upcoming operation of the equipment by the end user, raw materials to produce HDPE membranes will be purchased from a polymer plant located in Kiyanly (Balkan region), commissioned in October 2018. Technical parameters of the HDPE membrane: 1.      Raw material to be used: granular polyethylene (HDPE - LDPE) or similar recycled materials; 2.      Productivity: 100 - 200 kg/h; 3.      Size of the product (membrane): width from 2000 mm, thickness 0.5mm +/- 10%. Summing up, it is worth noting the fact that within 15 years of operation lifetime, the equipment will be able to produce a quantity of HDPE film to allow lining 1950 km. of canals and is expected to lead to energy savings of 80,940.6 GJ. and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 13,899 tCO2. 2. Forms for casting hexagonal concrete slabs To date, within the framework of the project, 1200 pieces of rubber precast hexagonal slabs - used in the manufacture of hexagonal concrete slabs to protect the polyethylene film from mechanical damage when lining irrigation canals with an anti-filtration coating - have also been purchased and transferred to the Buzmein plant of construction materials. It is worth noting that with this number of precast hexagonal slabs, it is estimated that approximately 250 m2 of finished concrete slabs can be produced during one working day (8 hours). A comparative analysis of monitoring water losses from a canal section lined with an anti-seepage coating in a natural earthen bed on medium loamy soils showed that hourly water losses in a lined canal account to 4 litres, which provides a canal efficiency of 0.99 (losses occur mainly due to evaporation with water surface), and in the earthen bed channel the hourly water loss is 205 litres. Theoretically, reducing water losses from canals and improving drainage in irrigated areas can bring the following benefits: •         Increasing irrigated area due to the saved volumes of water; •         Reducing the volume of removed drainage; •         Lowering groundwater levels and improving conditions for growing crops and increasing yields.