Youth-led change in Southern Kyrgyzstan: promoting gender equality, human rights, and media literacy with our local partner Novi Ritm

CAG and Novi Ritm, our partner organization based in Southern Kyrgyzstan, have been working together for several years to empower the local youth, particularly girls and women, by increasing their awareness of their rights and promoting their participation in decision-making processes at the national and community level. You can read more about our current format and objectives of cooperation with Novi Ritm via this link.    In this blog post, we would like to highlight some recent activities undertaken by Novi Ritm within the framework of our partnership. These include activities promoting ideas of intersectional feminism, human rights, media...

Promoting gender equality and equal access to education in Kyrgyzstan with our local partner Novi Ritm

For several years, Centralasiengrupperna has closely cooperated with our partner organization Novi Ritm in Southern Kyrgyzstan to promote active and meaningful participation of young people in the civil society sector. CAG has supported Novi Ritm in the implementation of activities that aim to increase the capacities of young people to influence their own lives and the lives of the communities they come from. One of the goals of the running project with Novi Ritm is to create equal education opportunities for young people and to inform local youth about their civil rights.  This blogpost is dedicated to the most...

Women’s Rights in Central Asia

107. What does this number stand for? As the Global Gender Gap Report for 2020 admits, this number represents the number of years needed for Central Asia and Eastern Europe to achieve gender equality. In this report, we can find the global gender equality rankings of three Central Asian countries: out of 153 countries, Kazakhstan placed at 72nd place, Kyrgyzstan at #93 and Tajikistan at #137. This begs the question: why have these countries scored so poorly in terms of gender equality? What is the general state of women’s rights in the region? This video will discuss the...

After #MeToo: A methodology to engage men in conversations that you probably are not familiar with yet

After the #MeToo campaign bursted in the spotlight, many men wanted to get involved in this work. However, many did not know where to start. One way was to post stories of men from all over the world about their own experiences of violence using various hashtags. This shows that men, as a group, began to wonder: “how could I personally contribute to the existence of such violations that the #MeToo campaign seeks to reveal and address?” MÄN, a Swedish organization, in collaboration with other similar minded organizations and institutions, along with CAG, endeavored in tackling this challenge by...

Volunteering opportunity with Central Asia Solidarity Groups

Deadline: January 25th, 2020 Hosting organization: Central Asia Solidarity Groups/Centralasiengrupperna Vacancy: 2 volunteering positions Start date: March (flexible) Duration: 12 months Volunteering opportunity with Central Asia Solidarity Groups The following vacancies are available at the Swedish organization Central Asia Solidarity Groups, through the European Solidarity Project funded by Erasmus+ and managed by the Swedish Agency for Youth and Civil Society. Candidates, who are interested in these volunteering positions must register at European Solidarity Corps portal and submit their CV together with one page letter of motivation no later than January 25st, 2020. Central Asia Solidarity Groups’ OID is E10064468....

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...

“They should respect girls like they respect each other” – International Women’s Day in Osh

Today is International Women’s Day and in Kyrgyzstan this is a public holiday. Banners are put up all over the city, wishing women happiness and prosperous lives with many children. For two days the streets in the city center has been filled with flower stands and everywhere you see men caring bouquets and gifts for their wives, mothers and sister. Even I have gotten my fair share of well wishes (for instance, a lady I met at the banya (russian sauna) two weeks ago, sent me a text with roses and hearts). To tell you the truth, I have...