Жаны Жыл, the New Year, is coming. My host niece
Ossil (some contend her name is spelled Asel in Latin script, but it sounds
like Fossil without the F so I submit my way is better, you be the judge) and I
prepared for the momentous occasion by making origami decorations and various
other crafts all day long. We’ll pick up where we started tomorrow, also we’re
going to make ribbon cookies.
Ossil decorating some snowmen
Our decorations!
Ossil acting too cool to stand close to the ornaments
There we go
The New Year
also means the official start of many projects. Here are the projects I know
I’ll be working on:
1. Help
Establish a Microcredit Agency within the NGO Epkin
2. Give Computer
Lessons to 6 Villages
3. Help Start a
School Theater Program in my village of Epkin
4. Help Revive
Epkin Village’s Library
5. Help Organize
and Run a Leadership/HIV Camp for Rural Youth
In addition to
these projects I will continue to give a weekly English talking club,
participate in some other camps, give trainings to my organization, help my
organization create a strategic plan and develop a marketing strategy, and host
visitors. Also, I’ve taken it upon myself this holiday season to make
Kyrgyzstan big fans of the a cappella group Pentatonix, I have to say, I’ve
been hugely successful.
At my last talking club we made origami ornaments as well.
This is a photo from a training I gave in late September
This is our latest logo
You might be
thinking, “Gee Sean, that sounds like an awful lot, are you sure you’ll be able
to do all of that?” Well, thanks for asking! You’re probably right, I’m sure by
the end of 2014 some of those projects will not have gone as I hoped, but let’s
try to keep a positive attitude. Here’s a more in depth breakdown of the
projects:
1. Help
Establish a Microcredit Agency (MCA) within the NGO Epkin
Firstly, you’ve
probably noticed most of my projects start with “Help,” this is intentional.
For several reasons I can only play a helping role, the two biggest reasons
being the need for community buy in and future sustainability of the project (I
want it to continue after I leave!). Secondly NGO stands for Non Governmental
Organization, a kind of catch-all for philanthropic minded organizations not
tied to the government. Apparently that term is being replaced with Civil
Society Organizations (CSOs).
I came to
Kyrgyzstan hoping to take part in the microcredit process in some way. I have
been overjoyed to learn that my organization both wants to start their own
microcredit agency and has the capacity to go through with it. This will be by
far the most difficult project I’ll be aiding my organization in, and will
likely have the largest impact.
We are currently
in the early stages of research and understanding the process we will need to
pursue. We may travel to southern Kyrgyzstan to interview two organizations
that started MCAs after having a similar structure to NGO Epkin. After
compiling the necessary research and beginning the certification process we
will need to apply for a grant to sustain a budget of upwards of $300,000.
(Anyone have deep pockets?)
2. Give Computer
Lessons to 6 Villages
Trying to pick out the computers. If you look in her hands you'll notice she's holding about 350,000 soms
Guljash is actually pretty good at the computer already. 1 down, 1079 to go.
And I thought
teaching my grandfather how to play solitaire on his computer was difficult!
How about giving lessons on how to use the Microsoft Office Suite in Kyrgyz,
with a Russian operating system to someone using a computer for the first time?
Not to mention using the Internet!
I’ve been
fortunate to have a test run about a week or two ago with a 20 year old who
wants to go to Germany for an Agronomy internship (she can speak Kyrgyz and
Russian fluently and is a beginner German speaker, not a single word of English
though). She needed to apply by sending in a resume, which meant she needed to
use a computer for the first time in her 20 years. I helped her create a Gmail
account, experiment with translate.google, and write her first resume. It was a
bit bumpy, but when I showed her how to check her email on her cell phone
things went much smoother.
Last week my
organization purchased six computers to be dispersed among six lucky villages.
It was a full day’s affair finding the right computers at the right price, but
we succeeded and now that Windows 7 and Microsoft Office have been installed
we’re ready to bring them to the villages. I’ll be installing three on Friday
and the other three on Saturday with a quick tutorial on each. I’m hoping they
won’t figure out how to get the Internet on them before I get back in January.
In January and
February (and likely March and April) I will be spending a week at a time in
each of the six villages to train the village Activist how to use it. The
theory is the activist will then teach the rest of the village. Wish us luck!
3. Help Start a
School Theater Program in my village of Epkin
This was not my idea
at all, but I love it! Having grown up next to the Vermont Children’s Theater,
participating in as many plays as I could from age 8 to 16 I am definitely
looking forward to this program. My counterpart’s daughter wants to start a
theater program for the boys in our village. She must have seen this somewhere
else because she has high plans for it. The hope is to have the boys put on
skits of what it is like for a girl in the village, then write short articles
on what they thought about the project. The articles will then be printed into
a booklet to be distributed to other rural schools throughout the oblast.
To start this
project we’ll be looking for donations to cover the costs of costumes and the
booklets. The school has already offered to donate their auditorium space for
the rehearsals and performances.
4. Help Revive
Epkin Village’s Library
That's the library!
The library is
in sad shape, to say the least. I walked by it for months thinking it was an
abandoned building, only to find out that it is the village library. The books
are so old and beaten that no one bothers going to the library anymore. Our
plan is two parts: 1. Get newer books (not necessarily new, but newer), and 2. Hold fun activities in the
library for the youth, like How to Make Paper for example.
If you know of
any places that donate Kyrgyz or Russian books please let me know. I’m already
pursuing some leads on English books.
5. Help Organize
and Run a Leadership/HIV Camp for Rural Youth
A picture from my English class last summer.
My organization
works in 18 villages in the Chui Oblast and we want to start Youth Advisory
Councils in each of the villages. We have agreed on starting by bringing two
youth from each village to a camp on Leadership and HIV/AIDS. Leadership will
be a main focus in the camp because these two youth will be tasked with
starting the councils in their villages. HIV/AIDS will be the other main focus
because according to my counterpart, and backed by the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime, the rural villages in Chui Oblast report the highest use of
intravenous drug use among youth in all of Kyrgyzstan, meaning these youth are
at the highest risk of HIV/AIDS.
Well, that
should be enough information for you for now! Merry Christmas and Happy New
Year! I’ll be spending the holidays with my oldest brother and his wonderful
family. I'll leave you with this youtube video from a TV interview earlier this summer. Stay tuned for the one that played tonight!
And here is a link to another TV interview on Kyrgyzstan's Channel 1 (skip to 2:20, my segment lasts until 9:10):
