Dinara Naumova

When Dinara Naumova’s phone starts ringing in the morning, colleagues in Astana may need a decision from a young deputy of the Mazhilis, or parents from a village rehabilitation center call about children taking first, shaky steps. Between these two worlds runs one promise she made to herself: that no child should feel as unwanted as people once assumed she would be. Dinara was born with cerebral palsy. At three years old her life was reduced to a sentence from doctors: “Nothing good awaits this child – she will just be a large,immobile body without intellect.” Her mother disappeared, her father started another family, and the little girl was left behind. One person refused to accept that verdict. Her grandmother, who after a long struggle became her legal guardian, carried her to hospitals, learned rehabilitation exercises and filled the house with firm rules. “You must have an education. You must have your own income,” she told her. “Whatever your circumstances, you have to be someone.”

The first time that inner confidence broke was at school. Arriving in a wheelchair, Dinara stared at the blackboard and desks, sure she would finally sit among other children. Instead she watched the principal and teachers huddle and conclude: “We’re not ready. What if someone drops her?” She went home and cried. Home schooling, visiting teachers and endless rehabilitation replaced the classroom. With tutors she still finished nine grades, but she did it at the kitchen table rather than among peers. Her grandmother insisted the story would not end there. Dinara chose chemistry and applied to the local college. She walked on new crutches while her grandfather whispered, “Pretend you can walk well, otherwise they won’t accept you.” In the admissions office someone said, “No, we can’t take you.” This time Dinara answered differently: “Let me take the entrance exam. If I fail, that’s one thing. If you refuse me because of my body, that’s another.” She passed with the required score; only after she and her grandmother signed waivers promising not to complain in case of an accident did the college accept her.

Dormitory life was a rough introduction to ordinary youth. She shared a crowded room, cried often and thought of quitting, but stayed and slowly learned to talk, joke and make friends. “I simply didn’t know how to connect with others; I was closed,” she says. It was an early lesson in adaptation: she could not change her diagnosis, but she could decide how to live with it. Back in her village she kept noticing other children with the same diagnosis, lying on sofas or beds, rarely going outside. “Why is no one helping them?” she asked her grandmother. The answer was honest: “We spent our whole life trying to raise and socialise you. Maybe those families don’t have the energy or money we had.” Dinara remembered the years of paperwork and queues her grandmother had endured. “Not everyone can endure that,” she realised. Out of this came the idea that would define her life: a local center where children with disabilities and their parents could receive support free of charge.

At eighteen she began sending grant applications wherever she could, but replies kept saying it was not yet her time. A TV project, “Menin Armanim” – “My Dream” – finally seemed like a breakthrough. She presented her idea, won, and was promised backing from an investor who even came to her village, stood with her in the crumbling House of Culture she hoped to renovate, listened to the estimate and then said: “You don’t need an investor. You need someone to pity you and just hand you the money. But that person won’t be me. If you believe in your project – do it. But without me.” “That broke me,” she says. “Everyone in the village already knew I was creating something. And then suddenly – nothing.” The dream did not disappear. While she studied and worked, “something always pulled me back to the project, like intuition,” she says. Eventually persistence met opportunity. The Foundation of the First President supported her proposal, then she won a grant “Tauelsizdik Urpaktary” to repair rooms, buy equipment and hire a small team and as a finalist of the grant programme was on the meeting with President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev. “That’s how the Center was created – literally bit by bit,” she says. “Now it has been working for three years.” The center earns almost nothing; Dinara keeps it alive from her own salary so that children can come for free. Some of the staff also have disabilities.

Her favourite moments are small ones that outsiders might overlook: a mother calling to say her daughter has started crawling; a boy who once came as a shy teenager returning with a college diploma and his first job. “You watch someone move from needing care to taking his own steps,” she says. “Those moments give me deep inner warmth.” Running the center also changed her from the inside. At first she was tormented by a feeling that nothing she did was enough. Gradually she let go of what she calls her “God complex” – the idea that she had to save everyone. “Even if we can’t help all children, helping some already means a lot. The main thing is to be near.” Balancing the center with parliamentary work and requests for advice leaves little time for rest. “Ninety to ninety-five percent of my time is taken by work,” she says. When exhaustion builds, she spends a couple of quiet days alone or returns to her village. Her grandmother still anchors her with two phrases: “Be glad if you have dirty dishes – it means you have something to eat. Be glad if your phone never stops ringing – it means people need you.” Dinara smiles when she repeats them.

Another part of her journey has been to heal self-worth. She met her biological mother at thirteen, heard her apology and chose not to live in resentment. It took years of inner work to break the thought “I’m worse than everyone,” but now she can say: “Even my story with my parents – that’s not a minus, it’s my plus. I trust God. He knows which path is mine.” That inner reconstruction shapes how she moves through public space.

In parliament, colleagues often tell her, “We never thought of you as a person with a disability.” She answers, “Because I never positioned myself that way. From the start I set the tone: I’m fine. I’m capable. I belong here.” She knows that entrepreneurs with disabilities in Qazaqstan still carry a double load: physical limits and the quiet question, “Are you sure you can handle this?” That is why she argues for a more attentive ecosystem, grants linked to mentorship, realistic guidance, trust in people who know their own bodies and challenges. When young women come to her with big dreams of social business, she listens and then gently grounds them.

Fear is natural, she adds, “the key is to make friends with it.” If she has to name her own compass, she offers three words: faith, structure, consistency. Faith in herself, in her mission and in her team; structure to organise limited energy; consistent action, even when progress is slow. In that weaving of mind, heart and will, the little girl once dismissed as “a large, immobile body without intellect” has become a woman who drafts laws, mentors others and spends her weekends celebrating when a child at her center takes an uncertain first step. Through Dinara, inclusion in Qazaqstan becomes not an abstract policy but a lived practice of standing beside those whom the system once left behind.