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CAG 10 years’ blog post series: Partners and projects throughout the years

Central Asia Solidarity Groups is turning 10 years old this year! To celebrate it, we take a look in the rearview mirror. Below we get an overview of partners and projects since 2012 – the year when CAG officially became a registered organization.   Back in 2012, CAG worked mostly with democratic youth activism and conflict transformation. A few years later, several new thematic areas had been developed – gender equality, LGBTQ and culture. In 2019, the thematic program area culture ceased to be a one of CAG’s main thematic areas. Instead, climate and environment became a thematic area, and...

Central Asia Days 2022

On the weekend of 5-6th of November Centralasiengrupperna is hosting the yearly Central Asia Days conference in Stockholm! During Central Asia Days 2022, we focus on two thematic areas: gender/women’s rights and climate/environment. Lectures and talks will be held in English by scholars and activists active in the region. On Saturday evening, there will be an additional movie screening at Zita Folkets Bio, Stockholm. The event is free of charge. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/…/central-asia-days-2022… Venue: Per Albinsalen, ABF-huset, Sveavägen 41, Stockholm. Full program: DAY 1: Saturday 5TH OF NOVEMBER THEME: Gender and Women’s rights 10.30-10.45: Welcome 10.45-11.45: Women’s participation in politics...

Women-led permaculture initiatives in semi-desert villages of Kyrgyzstan – part 2 (From seeds to harvest)

Since March 2021, CAG together with a local organization El-Too is implementing a project to introduce permaculture initiatives among 60 rural women of 5 villages in Kyrgyzstan. The goal of the project is promoting the womens’ role in land management, building sustainable livelihoods, facilitating gender equality and creating food sovereignty through permaculture kitchen gardens in semi-desert areas that suffer from land degradation. This is the second blog post about the project (you can find the first blog post here). Taking into account the level of knowledge of farmers and geographic conditions described by the lack of water and precipitation,...

The process of spreading biohumus on the top layer.

Women-led permaculture initiatives in semi-desert villages of Kyrgyzstan – part 1

Since 2018, CAG has worked within the thematic areas of climate and environment in Central Asia. This year we are piloting permaculture initiatives among rural communities in Kyrgyzstan as an intervention to deal with the problems of food insecurity, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss as well as gender inequality and community health. The pilot project is being implemented with local partner El-Too and was launched in March. This is the first of a series of blog posts about this exciting and innovative project. The villages on the south-west of Issyk-Kul lake, Kyrgyzstan, that are located in semi-desert areas are...

Central Asia Days 2018

On November 25th and 26th Centralasiengrupperna is hosting the fifth annual Central Asia Days conference in Stockholm! This two-event will include seminars, lectures, discussions, and a movie screening, with activists, civil society members and researchers. Free admission. Sign up here: https://simplesignup.se/event/141000  Full program: November 25, 12.00 – 19.15 ABF Huset (Per-Albin room), Sveavägen 41, Stockholm 12.00 – 12.30 Reception 12.30 – 14.00 Lecture: Gender Equality: Soviet vs Independent Kyrgyzstan The lecture will be held by Aisuluu Namasbek kyzy from the American University of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The lecturer will focus on comparison of gender equality in soviet and post-soviet Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan experienced...

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...

“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...

Presentation of the new CAG intern Amanda

Hi everyone, So far, 2017 has been treating me good. At the end of last year I got a call from Annika at CAG telling me that I’d gotten an internship at CAG – going to Osh, Kyrgyzstan to work with their partner organization Novi Ritm for four months. I guess most of you reading this already know about CAG and Novi Ritm – and probably also something about Kyrgyzstan. Therefore I wont be going into details about this part. I’ll just say that right now me and Emma (the other intern whom I’ll be going with) are in...

Part 1. Women’s Roles in the Construction of Identity in Kyrgyzstan: What is Kyrgyz National Identity?

Welcome to the first blogpost in the miniseries about the roles of women in Kyrgyz national identity! This post will be dedicated to clarify some concepts, such as national identity and gender, and shortly explain how and why they relate to each other. I will present a few theories of how national identity is constructed and maintained, to elaborate on my first out of three questions presented in my introductory post: What has been central in the construction of Kyrgyz national identity post-independence? What is National Identity? The understanding of a nation can be manifold. Several scholars from many...

Comics workshop on Gender Issues in Osh

Novi Ritm in Osh hosted a unique two days workshop on how to create comics and share girls problems in a patriarchial society. Workshops were organized by four members of the Swedish feminist collective of cartoonists Dotterbolaget with the collaboration between Centralasiengrupperna. During the first day participants learnt basics of comic drawing and different methods. On the second day, girls depending on their interest and will, were divided into 4 small groups, where they created their own comics on themes such as: bride-kidnapping, street harassment, violence against women and stereotypes. “Girls group” played a big role in organizing the...