Moving To Bishkek - New City. New Work. New Address.

I Am Moving To Bishkek

I’ve have had a very busy and productive summer full of summer camps, exploration and moving to the capital city. I moved to Bishkek in August to expand my work developing the independent broadcast media of Kyrgyzstan. (Please update your records with my new address available on this PDF Mailing Label).

Previously, while working in Talas, I was working at RadioMost 100.5 FM, the premier community radio station of Kyrgyzstan, where I was assisting them to develop new radio stations across all regions of the country. Now I have moved to Bishkek to work with the Kloop Media Foundation to develop the first ever internet radio broadcast originating from Kyrgyzstan. This station’s format will be similar to NPR or the BBC in that it will be mostly news but will also feature special stories originating from corespondents, or in our case the programs will largely originate from the community radio stations with which I have worked for the past year.

The New Project: kyrgyzmedia.kg

This project aims to expand the reach of the small radio stations in the rural areas of the country and allow for the whole world to tune in 24/7 and listen to radio journalists reporting from all regions of the country. Kloop currently produces a daily 30-minute news program in 3 languages (Russian, Kyrgyz and Uzbek) which can be heard at https://radio.kloop.kg. Analytics of the Kloop website suggest that our main audience are Kyrgyz immigrant workers living abroad, primarily in Russia. By providing streaming radio, these Kyrgyz people living abroad will have a chance to hear not only the national and headline news of Kyrgyzstan, but hear what is happening in their home communities.

The internet broadcast is scheduled to begin in January 2013. I will keep you updated on our progress.

My Ask Of You

In the meantime, please consider sending me a care package (I’m out of peanut butter!) and check out these photos of my new city:

The White House is the presidential work place of the Kyrgyz Republic. This is about 1 block from my apartment. Ala Too Color Guard The National Philharmonic was the site of my swearing-in ceremony to the Peace Corps and is about 2 blocks from my apartment. Lenin stands strong facing the parliament building of the Kyrgyz Republic. His back is to the National History Museum, which used to be the Lenin Museum.