Many successful businessmen know that mentoring can play a key role in a successful outcome. Why is mentoring so important? No doubt, every entrepreneur would like to have a good advisor, especially those who are just taking their first steps in the world of business. Toktobek Tashkaraev is a successful young entrepreneur from Talas oblast. He is running several businesses at a time: the family’s milk business, several trucks, and a hostel. Besides, he is working for an oil company. The hostel business, for instance, was taken up by Toktobek relatively recently. A year ago, he decided to renovate the apartment he bought with his earned money into a hostel. He says, he was prompted to this idea by the lack of hotels in the village of Kara-Buura and also because he had some relative experience of running hotels. As a result of his participation in one of the UNDP’s youth projects, he was awarded a grant of 70,000 KGS for the purchase of hotel furniture. He remarks that the amount of the grant was symbolic for him as he had invested much more to set up the hostel, but for him it was more important to participate and acquire new knowledge and skills in running the hotel business.

“Participation in the project brought me first of all new knowledge necessary to become a successful entrepreneur. After all, participation is not only a grant, but different trainings, meeting interesting people with similar goals, exchange of experience, and the most important - work with mentors. Without all this, it is impossible to build a business competently,” he says.

His hostel can accommodate seven residents at a time. Even though last year, due to quarantine, the hostel did not manage to open on time, today it works well and steadily brings income to its owner. In addition, Toktobek is a civic activist. He is known and recognized throughout the local area due to his public initiatives. He is one of those who resumed the work of the closed local youth association "Kyzyl Adyr zhashtar birimdigi" in 2016. As the chairman of this youth movement, he initiated assistance to the “Center for Babies and Children with Disabilities” in the form of payment for utilities, furniture, food, kitchen utensils and clothes for children.

“Helping has become a special tradition for our association, which was quickly picked up by other young people from our and neighboring districts. Together we had brought up various public social problems for discussion with local authorities and proposed concrete solutions, and they began to listen to us. So, this is how my social activities began,"- explains Toktobek.

According to Toktobek, he was not sure about participation when he heard about UNDP’s grant and mentorship project in Talas. However, today he is not a mentee anymore, but already a mentor for many aspiring entrepreneurs and shares his experience with them.

“When I heard about the project, it seemed to me that everything would be just for show, but I changed my attitude after the very first training within the project. I am so obsessed with the learning process. There was great energy, a positive atmosphere there and motivation! Speakers, training - I learned a lot. And at the second stage of the project, I already participated as a speaker and mentor on running a small business. In general, I think the idea of mentorship is cool. By teaching others, I master my knowledge. Mentoring helps me grow in my career, build strong relationships with others, and makes me feel satisfied from a thought that I can be useful for others,” says Toktobek.

In addition, in 2019, UNDP invited Toktobek to participate in a regional youth meeting held in Astana with the participation of other young people from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As Toktobek notes, it was one of the best events for the exchange of experience from where he brought a lot of ideas for local youth and which became a real start for his serious mentoring activity. Toktobek is sure that professional mentoring skills are an important addition to his real-life experience, which also plays a key role. This is his strength, which along with his entrepreneurial instinct that attracts his mentees, who are eager to learn from his experience and follow him.

“A good mentor should inspire people to collaborate in order to achieve common important goals - this is how a businessman should act. If I had not been involved in the project, I would not have known that I would make an excellent mentor - laughs Toktobek. - A person should not be satisfied with what has already been achieved, he must grow and constantly improve, passing on his experience, otherwise the growth chain interrupts."

Economic empowerment of youth is one of the priorities for UNDP in Kyrgyzstan. The provision of grant assistance and the organization of a mentoring program became possible in 2020 within the framework of the UNDP project "Strengthening Community Resilience and Regional Cooperation to Prevent Violent Extremism in Central Asia" implemented with the financial support from the Government of Japan and consulting support from business accelerator John Galt.