Category 1: Policy. All participants of the study had stories to share about their involvement in the policy realm in inclusive education reform. The most common themes that emerged were regards to their participation in policy making and policy revision, which reflects the advocacy potential of the NGOs. Thus, as the participant P1 explained: “A couple of times we caused a real change. For example, the policy that children with intellectual disabilities were not allowed to attend the mainstream school was canceled after several roundtables and discussions held by our foundation” This is an example of an NGO revising certain existing policies. Often times the Ministry of Education or local governing bodies such as Akimats (local governing bodies) or The Department of Education invited the representatives of NGOs to join working groups to revise or to form the policies. Participant (P4) claimed the following: “We specifically made amendments to the law on opening cabinets of correction in cities. In general, we provided recommendations to the ministry on reviewing the laws on operations of specialized institutions. We also took part in the working group organized by “Bolashak” association in order to revise the coordinating unions. This working group included government officials and the institutions under the Ministry of Education such as National Center for Correctional Pedagogy and National Academy of
