We are sharing updates from our residents, Johanna and Susanna, who recently completed their residencies at Novi Ritm, our long-standing partner in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. In this post, they reflect on their experience at Novi Ritm’s Girls’ Day Conference, a powerful celebration of sisterhood and young women’s dreams for the future.
Every year on October 11, the world comes together to celebrate International Day of the Girl Child. This special day, declared by the United Nations in 2011, is a call for action to address challenges girls face globally. It is a day to empower girls, advocate for their rights and remember that young girls have the power to shape their own destinies and contribute meaningfully to society. This year, the theme was Girls’ vision for the future, emphasising the importance of listening to and supporting the aspirations of young women.
In the same spirit, Novi Ritm hosted their annual conference for girls in October, focusing on educational and professional opportunities and fostering self-acceptance and resilience. We were lucky to be in Osh during the conference weekend to attend the conference and had the opportunity to interview several participants. In this blog post, we share our own reflections on this inspiring feminist event, which is named after a Kyrgyz proverb “Кыздын кырк чачы улуу”, conveying a message of girls’ significance and potential.
Novi Ritm has organised this annual one-day girls’ day conference since 2021. During the lunch break, one of the former members of the Novi Ritm team told us that when they first started hosting feminist discussion events nearly 10 years ago, they approached participants individually, cautiously using the term feminism and often needing to motivate girls to attend. Over time, there has been a significant shift in attitudes around feminist events: today, young people are genuinely interested in participating in the girls’ day conference. Instead of personal invitations, the Novi Ritm team now promotes the event through social media and a public registration form, gathering more than 150 registrations each year. The participants and speakers were mainly coming from Osh city and region, with some speakers invited from the capital, Bishkek.
This year, the conference featured sixteen speakers, who each delivered twenty-minute talks on a range of topics, including education, capacity-building, family, and self-acceptance. Following each presentation, participants had the opportunity to engage in interactive discussions and ask questions. Thanks to one Novi Ritm team member and one participant for their English translations, we were able to enjoy these sessions, too. We attended talks on the topics of entrepreneurship, child-free living, healthy communication with family, saving up for education abroad, working as an engineer in a man-dominated field, and discovering your authentic self.
The participants we discussed with really appreciated the conference as a place to share ideas and learn from each other. As beautifully described by one of the participants, Aijan, the conference connects all girls, and is a space where they can share their experiences. She reflected on how the conference teaches girls about their rights: “When girls understand their emotions and rights, they can learn to set boundaries.” For another participant, Aisana, the conference was also about knowledge-sharing and girls helping each other.
The conference was also a time for reflection and dreaming. In the centre of the entrance hall, a beautiful rug embroidered with “моя мечта” (“my dream”) invited participants to share their aspirations. Throughout the day, the rug was filled with colourful post-it notes, each representing a personal dream. One of the participants, Mobina, shared with us how the conference inspired her to remember her dreams: “For me, this conference is about remembering my dreams. I have become so focused on studying and tasks that I have forgotten what I truly want to do in this life.” She continued reflecting on the importance of the girls’ day conference and similar youth-led spaces for girls. Her thoughts align with what we heard earlier from Aijan and Aisana: that it is important to create safe spaces for girls to share their experiences of and in the Kyrgyz society, because “girls are our future.”
We both were deeply touched by the caring and supportive atmosphere created in the conference. The theme of this year’s International Day of the Girl Child, Girls’ vision for the future was present in the inspiring speeches and in the reflections of the participants. Many reflected on the societal norms of the Kyrgyz society, the expectations that are rooted in family and traditions. One participant, Ayim, emphasised that when we support and care for each other, we can inspire everyone to envision and work towards a more equal future. One of the speakers summarised it perfectly: “Our superpower is sisterhood.”
Johanna and Susanna