Anara Toktarova

Biography

Anara Toktarova was born on 8 September 1956 in Talas, the eldest of four children of a railway engineer and a school nurse. She finished School No. 4 in Talas in 1973 and trained as a primary-school teacher at the pedagogical faculty of Iradi State University, now Talas State University, graduating in 1977.

In 1977 she married Erlan Toktarov, then a newly commissioned lieutenant. While her husband served in Afghanistan and in the Belorussian Military District she lived in Talas with their children and taught the first four classes at School No. 4. When the family settled in Kobozev, now Nurzhan, in 1989, she taught at School No. 12 there; after 1992 she returned with the family to Talas and taught until 1998.

Every New Year she had taken her pupils to sing for the children of Talas Children's Home No. 1, the city's largest state children's home. In 1998 she became chair of its board of trustees, and on 1 June 2008, International Children's Day, she founded the Anara Toktarova Children's Fund to carry the work to the children's homes of Nurzhan and to the villages of the districts.

Mrs Toktarova holds no government post and receives no salary from the state or from the Fund. She has accompanied the Governor at state ceremonies since 2007, and every Irad Day she receives war widows and the families of soldiers who fell in the civil wars. Since July 2024, while the Governor continues his work from an extended health retreat, she has carried on the family's public duties: at her receptions and at the Fund's events she is often joined by her son Bekzat Toktarov, a trustee of the Fund, and by her daughter, Zara Toktarova.

She knits, and the scarves and children's mittens she makes each winter go into the Fund's Warm Winter parcels.

The Anara Toktarova Children's Fund helps the children of the Zone who need help most: children in state care, children in hospital and the children of the districts' villages. It is a charitable foundation registered with the Ministry of Justice in 2008, run by a small staff and some 300 volunteers, and financed by private donations and the support of Irad's businesses.

Trustees and partners

Board of trustees: Anara Toktarova (chair); Bekzat Toktarov; the head of paediatrics of Talas Regional Hospital; the directors of the children's homes of Talas and Nurzhan; a representative of the parents' councils of the districts. Executive director: Nazgül Asanbekova.

Partners: Talasbank, Attelkom, Bereke supermarkets, Iradiya and IradOne. The Fund publishes a report on its work every spring, available at its office.