Текст на русском здесь.

Application Deadline: June 1, 2008

 Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices, in collaboration with the Open Society Institute Public Health Program’s Health Media Initiative, is now accepting project proposals for the third round of microgrant funding of up to $5,000 for new media outreach projects focused especially on public health issues involving marginalized populations. Ideal applicants are dynamic NGOs or individuals who: (more…)

As most of you will know, we at neweurasia are working on a book drawing its contents from the Stanosphere. Chris Schwartz, the editor of the book, has previously written on the homebase. He introduced the book project here, and gave an update on our progress here. The book’s dedicated blog is available here.

We have sourced a lot of material from within neweurasia (mostly English material) and are now looking for contributions from all other blogs that discuss the region - written in all languages. We are looking for posts that are fitting the preliminary chapter list Chris and I agreed on in Philadelphia two weeks ago. Please send your contributions to us at ben(at)neweurasia(dot)net or te(dot)schwartz(at)gmail(dot)com and read further details on the submission process here.

Please have a look below the jump to see the chapters in their current form. This book needs your input to be representative of the Central Asian blogging community! (more…)

Finally, after a slight delay for unavoidable technical reasons, I am delighted to announce the results of neweurasia’s Best Central Asian Blog 2007 competition.

There were some extremely good blogs in the competition and judging was a difficult undertaking - to the extent that we went so far as to find a further two judges to verify the results. All the blogs are well worth a read, so please do follow the links to the individual blogs and have a read. So, without further ado, here are the results:

Best Central Asian Blog 2007

1st place - Timur Rayimkulov (KG), who wins an expenses paid trip to the 2008 Global Voices Summit, which will be held later this year in Budapest, Hungary.

2nd place - Kairzhan Yegizbayev (KZ), who wins a cash prize of $50.

3rd place - Real Uzbekistan [real name not published] (UZ), who also wins a cash prize of $50.

Best Photo Blog

Azamat Imanaliev (KG), who wins photographic equipment worth $250.

Our sincere congratulations to all the winners! We will be contacting all the winners to arrange getting their prizes to them in the next few days.

Finally, grateful thanks to our two “extra” judges, Madeleine Reeves and Oksana Mandryka for carrying out their duties so professionally at short notice.

Hello everybody,

My name is Christopher Schwartz. Some of you in the neweurasia community have probably heard of me; most of you, however, have not. I am a friend of Ben’s from his early days in London, and I worked as the English language editor on neweurasia’s predecessor website, Thinking-East. I am proud to now introduce myself as the editor for neweurasia’s next great project, CyberChaikhana: Digital Conversations from Central Asia.

Visit the blog here, and sign up to the Google Group here. And make sure to read the rest of this entry!

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The third issue of Steppe Magazine, Central Asia’s first glossy magazine devoted to the arts, culture, people, history and landscape of the region, has just been published. This time, neweurasia teamed up with the editors of the magazine and contributed a Guide to Central Asian Blogs.

As a bonus to our readers, you can download the article here. Let us know what you think! Furthermore, we have started compiling an online Central Asia Blog guide at neweurasia.net/steppemagazine. If you think your blog should be included there, please let us know!

Of course, the “rest” of the current Steppe is well worth a read as well, not least for its stunning photography. Check out the magazine’s website for delivery options. Here’s a quick rundown on the main stories featured:

The two main features of Steppe 3 centre around the Aral Sea. So infamous is the story of the sea’s environmental devastation that we do not repeat it, but instead follow those who eke out a living by fishing from its shores. An extended photo essay with stunning images of ice fishing on the Aral Sea presents a stark insight into life in the surrounding fishing villages and shows that beauty can be found even amongst the harshest of realities. While a World Bank and Kazakh-sponsored dam is raising hopes for rising water levels, a local collective has helped open a fish-processing centre in Aralsk, a former Aral Sea port and major provider of fish for the entire Soviet Union, which now lies some 20 km from the sea’s shores. Steppe presents one of the very first articles that focuses on the human side of the Aral Sea disaster at a time when the sea is starting to come back to life.

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It’s been more than two years now that neweurasia has been around the Central Asian blogosphere - high time to write a Happy Birthday note! Thanks to all of our readers, contributors and supporters for making this project come this far! Check out the first post on the homebase and click around to see where it all started.

To let you know where we’ve been coming from, we actually need to rewind to 2004, when Chris Schwartz and Ben Paarmann founded Thinking-East - neweurasia’s predecessor website. With a focus on news and analysis generated by people from the ground, we have shed light at under-reported issues and given space to young and bright minds from day one.

Concentrating on the strengths that our website showed when reporting on Central Asia and the Caucasus, neweurasia was the logical continuation. Blogs quickly became our preferred medium - since they meant less editing and quicker and more direct publishing. We went live in the summer of 2005, with all country blogs operational later that year.

neweurasia wouldn’t be around today without the many and mostly “Western” volunteers who helped to set up the website in the beginning: Their help and sharp pens quickly turned neweurasia into one of the most visited blogs on the region. This group included Claire, Katy, Marianna, Peter, Rico, James, Neil, Jeremy, Nick to name but a few. (more…)

Well, 2007 has come and gone, and to commemorate the new year, neweurasia recently asked its contributors and friends to survey the events of 2007 and evaluate which of them will go down in history as the most important. Now you can tell us what you think by voting below for which event or development was most crucial for the region as a whole.

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Over the next month, TOL and neweurasia are accepting submissions for the Best Central Asia Blog Awards. There are several prizes to be won, and the overall winner will get to go to the next Global Voices conference in 2008.

The announcement and submission page (in Russian) is now live at www.neweurasia.net/bestblog.

Over the following weeks, we will try to spread the word about this competition in the Central Asian blogosphere, soliciting as many submissions as possible. The winners will be announced by the jury in mid-January.

The translation of the announcement into English can be read after the jump. If you want to submit a blog, please use the form on the award page. (more…)

First off, thanks to all those of our readers who took the time to fill in our survey. The three lucky winners have been notified and the gifts are on their way. The feedback we received from you guys was great and it helped us to define more clearly what we are about and where are heading towards in the future.

The second bit of news: Even if you’re not a Kazakh speaker, check out neweurasia’s first-ever podcast on our Kazakh language blog. Askhat, the blog’s editor, interviewed Özgecan, one of our volunteer contributors on the English Kazakhstan blog.

Apologies for the drop in posting frequency over the past couple of days. All of our bridge bloggers are currently in Prague, where many of them meet in person for the first time and together discuss ways to improve neweurasia in the future.

We have also finished the reader survey, many thanks to those who filled in the questions. We will notify those lucky enough to win one of the three prizes by next week.