We are thankful for the 31 participants (25 students and 6 staff) who joined our Servant Leadership Academy program in Kazakhstan in May-June, 2025, held in partnership with the Kazakh-American Free University. Participants were from Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, the USA, Thailand, and the Philippines. Many participants described their experience at the Academy program as “life changing.”
The program included a combination of learning experiences. This included living and learning together with people from different cultures, experiencing people and organizations that are serving others in amazing ways, and experiencing a safe community where participants could share their life story with others.
We visited nine amazing organizations during the Academy, and through each visit, we saw inspiring examples of servant leadership. These visits included two for-profit businesses – a bread factory and a trout farm, an educational institution (our partner – KAFU), a leadership organization for youth and families, a school for special needs children, a nursing home, a public library, a home for single mothers needing assistance, and a addiction recovery center. After each visit, our students would lead debrief groups to help us think through what we learned. A final outcome of the Academy was that each student developed their own personal mission statement expressing how they feel called to serve others in their life.
