The Program Open Budget Fellowship will held for the third time in 2019 with the support of the Soros Foundation-Kazakhstan. We have spoken to the alumnus of the first intake of the program, and now its full-fledged trainer Kuanysh Onalbayev. In an interview, he told about how the training works, what researchers encounter and how transparent budgets in Kazakhstan are.

The non-governmental organization Project Syndicate is the largest media network of columnists in the world, which collaborates with leading experts in various areas: from politics to medicine. Among their authors there are Nobel laureates and renowned politicians. Currently the project is expanding and it is planned to attract authors and media partners from Central Asia to the network. We had an opportunity to speak to Global Relations Manager Callum Voge and pose the questions of concern.  

This year the team of the first independent amateur film festival Clique holds a documentary competition of Central Asia. This project evolved from the program of the main festival Clique.Doc, which consisted of documentary films. In an interview, producer of two projects Nargiz Shukenova told about the reason why conceptualization of Central Asia is in the centre of documentarians’ attention

In 2016-2017, the “New Civil Initiatives” Program of the Soros Foundation-Kazakhstan supported 14 city projects conceived by researchers, creative citizens and specialists. The projects were aimed at creating an amiable city environment, whether it is research on availability of parking facilities of the outskirts of Almaty or a theatre platform in the “Tastak” neighbourhood.