First Lady of Kazakhstan

Sara Nazarbayeva, First Lady of Kazakhstan

Sara Alpysqyzy Nazarbayeva (Kazakh: Сара Алпысқызы Назарбаева) (born 9 January, 1941, in Kzyl-Zhar, Kazakhstan) is the First Lady of Kazakhstan and wife of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. She married Nursultan in 1962 after her graduation. They now have three daughters; Dariga, Dinara and Aliya and three grandchildren. A trained economics engineer, Sara Nazarbayeva is the Founder and Chair of Bobek an International Children’s Charity Fund. For her work with children she is a winner of the Ihsan Dogramaci Family Health Foundation Prize from the World Health Organization and The International Unity Prize.

Mrs. Nazarbayeva is the President of Bobek, an International Children’s Foundation, which she founded in 1992 soon after the country became independent. She created Bobek to help mother and child care, provide supervision of foundling homes and orphanages, provide equipment and supplies to schools, aid gifted children from low-income families, and to assist the child health care system.

In 1997 she launched the first National Children’s Rehabilitation Center and the “S.O.S. Children’s Villages of Kazakhstan” which are family villages for orphans. These consist of several houses build together in a group where many children live in one house with several caretakers. Mrs. Nazarbaeva’s plans for the children’s villages enable the orphaned children to grow up in a family atmosphere.