ASTANA – Young Kazakh psychologist from the Kyzylorda region Symbat Abdrakhmanova is helping young children with speech and language difficulties and their parents overcome those challenges.
Symbat Abdrakhmanova. Photo credit: 100esim.el.kz
Abdrakhmanova is among the 102 winners of the nation’s 100 New Faces project to recognise people with exemplary experience and merits contributing to the nation’s development.
Abdrakhmanova works in the regional education centre. As a psychologist, Abdrakhamova is also engaged in work to identify suicidal sentiments among teenagers. She developed a psychological test for that purpose.
She works with speech therapists helping children tackle their problems with speech. To date, she released two cartoons – “Dybystardy Mashyqtandyru” (Training the Sounds in Kazakh) and “Konildi Tuster” (Fun Colours), where a little girl named Sara takes little viewers on her journey exploring the world and giving them different tasks.
“I noticed how my children watch cartoons at home and complete all tasks [required by educational cartoons] with great pleasure. Then I came up with the idea to create my own cartoons with a goal to help children with disabilities,” said the psychologist.
Many children in Kazakhstan encounter different speech difficulties, according to her. “I wanted to help them,” she added.
A mother of three, Abdrakhmanova is a self-taught animator gaining her knowledge from the internet. She runs the project on her own, writing the script, editing and publishing it online.
The biggest challenge, she noted, was doing a voice over, and her colleagues and friends helped her with that.
The key requirement was for the voice to be clear, understandable for children and pleasant to the ear, she added.
