Inclusivity

Overview

Our team strongly values inclusivity in our work. We believe that the main issue which we solve in our project—safe cosmetics usage—is related to everyone, regardless of their age, ethnicity, presence of any disabilities, or social and economic background.

Our main priority is to make sure that our work reaches and helps a wide range of people.

We want to note that all people featured in the pictures gave their consent for that. For children aged under 18, we received consent from their parents.

Multilingualism And The Book

We have developed a children's book that teaches skin health, self-care, and the safe use of cosmetics through storytelling. The goal of this project was to make science and health education accessible and engaging for children aged 6–11.

You can read more about our book on the Education page.

Braille

To make our book even more accessible, we decided to adapt it for people with visual impairments. According to the WHO, there are more than 160,000 visually impaired people in Kazakhstan. Despite this, something as widespread as cosmetics does not take the needs of these people into account.

We decided to take action to address this. Firstly, we contacted a group of specialists who translated both the Russian and Kazakh versions of our book into Braille.

Collaboration with "TelliKz"

We managed to contact the founder of the school "Shoqan" Asselle Tasmagambetova when we were looking for sponsors to fund out trip to the Grand Jamboree. She also happened to be the founder of TelliKz. This is how we edned up collaborating with one of the largest local Global Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standard companies—TelliKz. We conducted several conferences where we discussed our problem and asked for their support for our upcoming events.

TelliKz has provided us with 100+ organic cosmetic products. This was a significant step in our inclusivity journey, as we used these products in our next outreach activity.

By collaborating with such a large-scale and prestigious company, we demonstrate our readiness to push beyond limits to achieve our goal and help as many individuals as we can.

School For Visually Impaired Students

On October 6th, 2025, our team visited a school for blind students where we organized an outreach event. At the beginning, we introduced them to the iGEM competition and our project. After that, we played different games and conducted other entertaining and interactive activities, such as debates.

Moreover, we presented and read our educational book, discussed the main ideas, and received their feedback, which was unanimously positive. Our main goal was to show that everyone has a right to safety when using cosmetics, regardless of their physical abilities.

At the end of the event, we gifted 29 kits of cosmetics to 29 students, giving away a total of 116 self-care products. We attached informative labels in Braille onto each package, which is certainly a novelty in Kazakhstan, as there are few to no cosmetic labels that provide information in Braille.

To adapt the labels, we:

1. Studied how the printed (stick-on) Braille looks on products.
2. Selected the optimal size of stick-on labels.
3. Translated key phrases and abbreviations into Braille:

   h.c. – hand cream

   f.c. – face cream

   b.l. – body lotion

   s.o. – shampoo for oily roots

   h.b. – hair balm

   s. – shampoo

We also printed over 200 stickers with Braille and gifted them to these students so they can stick them on their own products and easily identify them.

Our main goal is to make cosmetics safer for everyone, and the first step toward this is to make them easier to recognize, especially for people with physical disabilities.

Student Feedback

To understand the real-life impact of our idea, we asked the students from the school to give us feedback on the sticker usage:

Dias: "I could recognize products by touching them, but some bottles were the same and I would confuse shampoo with shower gel. These stickers will change everything. I'm grateful that there are people who care about even the little things that cause inconvenience for people like us."

Marzhan: "I've never even thought about this idea. It's so simple, yet no one actually cares about such small things, but this will make my life easier. Sometimes I put paints in my makeup bag by accident and then end up applying them on my skin because I simply can't distinguish them. I will definitely use these stickers on my products. Thank you."

We received even more positive feedback, which means that our approach reached them and will improve their daily lives. We were immensely glad to have made this positive contribution to these children's lives.

Inclusion In Action

Our team welcomed Soior, our peer with Cerebral Palsy, offering him a place on our team free of charge.

He made a significant contribution to our team with his outstanding ideas and work, proving that physical limitations do not prevent anyone from taking part in scientific research and teamwork.

Thanks to his personal experience and unique perspective, he suggested an idea that became a crucial part of our work: the creation of a Telegram bot that helps users analyze cosmetic ingredients. The bot operates in Kazakh, Russian, and English.

NIS-Kazakhstan's goal is to create a biosensor that is easy to use. Based on his own needs and daily challenges, Soior explained that for people with disabilities like Cerebral Palsy, a portable and easy-to-use mobile tool would be even more convenient and inclusive.

Inspired by his perspective, our team developed this bot, which became an important part of our inclusivity efforts. Through his experience and ideas, Soior showed that inclusivity can bring a diversity of thought and perspective into any team.

Impact and Conclusion

By popularizing education, we believe we can increase people's interest in science and its impact on our lives. We believe we have done a good job of making education and science accessible to people with different ethnic and physical backgrounds. Moreover, we have contributed to making people's daily lives easier and more comfortable, and there is no greater reward than that.