[English] Interview with Anita and Sara, new CAG interns

The picture above is of Anita and Sara, who visited CAG’s office in Malmö as a part of their preparation for an internship in Kyrgyzstan to work with our partner Novi Ritm, a youth organization based in Osh. We asked Sara and Anita a few questions about themselves and about their expectations from the internship.  Tell us a bit about yourself.  Anita: I’m doing my masters right now in Security and Crisis Studies at the Swedish Defense University. I’ve already been involved in civil society for quite a long time, primarily through the Swedish United Nations Association, so I...

(English) Being an intern in Kazakhstan

Hello everyone! I am now back in Sweden and have just started to write my master thesis in strategic communication at Lund University. I had a wonderful time in Kazakhstan and will in this blogpost sum up my experiences from living and working as an intern for UNICEF in Astana, Kazakhstan and traveling around Central Asia. UNICEF’s work in Kazakhstan is mainly focused on health, education, child protection and social inclusion. They work with the Government and national and international partners to ensure the rights of all children enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)....

Emma Rönngren

(English) Presentation of Emma, intern at UNICEF Kazakhstan

Hi! My name is Emma Rönngren and I am a second year master student in strategic communication at Lund University. I am currently living in Astana, Kazakhstan where I am doing a two month long internship at the UNICEF country office. The internship is part of my studies and the reasons why I ended up in Kazakhstan are many. First and foremost because of my passion for the Russian language and culture, and my weakness for former Soviet states. I have two bachelor degrees: one in public relations and one in Russian language and literature. During my studies I have...

(English) 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...

(English) 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...

(English) 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...

(English) 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...

(English) “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...