Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) – On 7 December 2020, the Ministry of Public Education of the Republic of Uzbekistan hosted a ceremony to award Ms. Ashita Mittal, Regional Representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Central Asia, with the medal "Khalk talimi fidoyisi" (For devotion to the cause of the people’s education).

Ms. Ashita Mittal has been UNODC Regional Representative for Central Asia since 2014. During her leadership, UNODC and the Ministry of Public Education of the Republic of Uzbekistan have developed successful and useful cooperation within the framework of several initiatives aimed at preventing crime and drug use among young people through sports, teaching family skills, improving their mental well-being and increasing their resistance to various negative factors in life, promoting healthy lifestyles, fostering legal literacy and broadening the legal horizons, as well as education in the spirit of respect for the rule of law. 

Among such joint initiatives, it should be noted:

- in 2013-2015, the "Family and School Together" program, which covered 391 schools, 5,700 families and trained 800 trainers. This project is still used in general education schools.

- in 2016-2018, the "Strong Family" program, within the framework of which 2017 facilitators were trained, who conducted trainings in 4328 schools throughout the country, reaching 43310 students and their parents who needed psychological help. The modules of this program are still used by school psychologists.

- in 2018, the Education for Justice Initiative (Global Program for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration, E4J). Within the framework of this program, consisting of three cycles (for primary, middle and high school students), a number of measures were carried out to improve the legal culture of students through trainings for trainers, interactive games aimed at combating corruption "Honesty", demonstration of social videos and books describing the dangers that can be found on the Internet and much more. Also, 9 episodes of the animated series "Zorbs", created within the framework of the Doha Declaration in order to increase the culture of the rule of law, were translated into Uzbek and a manual for teachers was developed for them. This animated series and the guide were included in the textbooks on the newly introduced subject "Education", which will reach 600,000 thousand schoolchildren in grade 4 annually.

- from 2019 to the present day, a new program "Close-knit family", which develops life skills of positive psychology and stress management, within which 70 trainers were trained, was included in the national concept "Close-knit family - a happy school" in the Republic of Uzbekistan.

- from 2019 to the present day, the implementation of the UNODC Global Initiative on Sports Life Skills "Hayotga Kushil" ("Join Life"), which covered 27 schools in the Ferghana Valley (Andijan, Namangan, Ferghana) and 13 schools in the city of Tashkent, and also within which 45 schools were equipped with 22 items of sports equipment.

- The success of the "Hayotga Kushil" ("Join Life ") program allowed expanding work on crime prevention among schoolchildren through sports and initiating the filming of social video clips. In this regard, a series of 4 videos was shot, the heroes of which were real people - famous and novice athletes and ordinary schoolchildren, who were able to overcome life’s difficulties and choose positive goals for the future. One of the videos of the hero who became a Paralympic athlete was also proposed by the Ministry as a multimedia application for the textbook "Education".

At the end of the ceremony, the parties expressed mutual gratitude for the cooperation, and also noted possible areas for expanding cooperation in the best interests of students and their family well-being, their mental well-being, as well as in order to educate the growing generation of the country in the spirit of a healthy lifestyle and respect for the rule of law.