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Central Asia Days 2017

On November 26th and 27th Centralasiengrupperna (CAG) is hosting the fourth annual Central Asia Days! This two-event will include seminars, lectures, discussions, and a movie screening, with activists and civil society members from Central Asia. Free admission.  Full program: November 26, 13.30 – 19.00 Solidaritetshuset (Draken) Tegelviksgatan 40, Stockholm 13.30 – 14.00 Reception 14.00 – 16.00 Panel discussion  Queer feminism and activism in Central Asia and expression of feminism in art and culture The panel will be led by Zhanar Sekerbayeva, who comes from queer-feminist initiative “Feminita” based in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Ruth Jenrbekova, who comes from Creolex cultural center,...

Coming home from Kyrgyzstan – three months later

It has now almost been three months since me and Emma arrived back in Sweden, after spending four months in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. Previously when I’ve spent some time abroad, I’ve marvelled at the fact that your life just goes back to normal so quickly; you meet up with old friends, walk the same streets as you’ve always walked before, go back to work or school – and all of a sudden it’s like you forget that you’ve just spent the last four or six months in a foreign country – with new friends and different streets – and that...

VED – Zerafshan Improvisation

In 2014 we made a project with the experimental rock group VED from Malmö. The result was a three week long tour through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan wich included concerts, workshops, informal and formal jamsessions and meetings with other musicians and culture workers. In the village of Zerafshan in the Fann Mountains in Tajikistan we found an abandoned Soviet factory and recorded this improvisation. Filmed at location by Maciej Kalymon and Michael Cavanagh. Edited by Maciej Kalymon. Music performed at location by VED. Edited by VED. www.vedsound.com...

Creating spaces for young people – the opening of a “KulturCafe” in Naryn

This weekend Novi Ritm was invited to the opening of a “KulturCafé” in the city of Naryn. It’s a city situated in the central parts of the country and it’s the administrative center of the region of Naryn. According to the university students that initiated Naryn’s “KulturCafé”, social life in the city is mostly centered around the family. Public spaces to hang out at and meet other people – especially for young people, are rare, even non-existing. Therefore, the goal of creating this “KulturCafé” was to increase the quality of life as well as knowledge building between different cultures...

Social theatre in Sumhat – discussing the issue of suicide among young people in Kyrgyzstan

As you can read about here and here, Novi Ritm’s 1325-team is currently spending most of its time traveling around the regions and towns where we’ve previously held trainings, in order to supervice and document the third and last step of the project, which is: facilitating peace initiatives and regional network working together with issues relating to UNSCR 1325. From the second step of the project: awareness raising and knowledge building activities in the three regions of Osh, Batken and Jalal-Abad, participants from nine of the schools that we’ve visited have been granted money for coming up with and...

Why are only women on parental leave?

Yesterday me, Amanda and Aida participated in “consultation between lawyers and young people” made within one of the projects at Novi Ritm, the 1325-project. The consultation where held in Osh city.  Some weeks ago Novi Ritm arranged “trainings of trainers” and the next step for these young trainers have been to implement a mini project in their local context. All these mini projects will be implemented in May and we will try to participate and report about as many of them as possible. This project was carried out by Guliza and Dastan, see picture below. The session between lawyers and...

Training in Aravan

This friday me and Amanda together with staff from Novi Ritm, participated in a training made within one of the projects at Novi Ritm, the 1325-project. The training were held in a school in Aravan, about 30 minutes from Osh city. Some weeks ago Novi Ritm arranged “trainings of trainers” and the next step for these young trainers have been to implement a mini project in their local context. Three girls, Naila, Zarnigor and Dilyora facilitated the training which began with a discussion about gender stereotypes, social constructed and biological gender, UN resolution 1325 and some games. You could...

A road trip through Tajikistan

Living in Osh, you sometimes forget how close you are to your neighbours, that is to say, neighbours in surrounding countries. Looking at a map, Uzbekistan is less than 10 km from Osh city centre and even though Uzbek culture is highly present in Osh (probably due to around 50 % of the city’s population being ethnic Uzbeks), crossing the border to Uzbekistan is anything but simple. However, Uzbekistan is not your only option if you want to explore another country but still stay in the region. Living in the Kyrgyz part of the Fergana Valley, you basically find...

A visit from Sweden

In correspondence with the close partnership that Centralasiengrupperna and Novi Ritm share, this week Annika (Coordinator on Gender and Women’s Rights) and Jessica (previous EVS-volunteer at Novi Ritm and currently working with budgeting and economy in the two projects on a voluntary basis) are visiting from Sweden, the main purpose being to evaluate not only how the projects are coming along, but also in what ways we can continue our partnership. Today we spent the day outside of Osh, namely in Alay (roughly one and half hours drive from Osh), with the purpose of doing a bit of teambuilding...

Everyday life in Osh

In Osh, new things happens all the time and we meet new people everyday. After a few weeks of acclimatizing we have started to get some routines in our life and Osh finally is feeling more like my – at least, second home. In this blogpost I will talk about everyday life in Osh and give example of what we do during our days here. The day usually starts around 08.00 when me and Amanda gets up and we have breakfast in our house. After that we usually head to the gym. We have a really nice gym and since both...