Coordinating media development in Kyrgyzstan

Working closely with national, regional and international partners is a fundamental instrument in addressing the challenges of media development assistance. Held in April, the Kyrgyzstan Media Sector Collaboration Meeting was a first step to establish a joint platform to coordinate and harmonise the media development work in the country

By Gohar Khodjayan & Henrik Keith Hansen

“It is priceless to meet every now and then to get a better overview of what everybody is doing,” said a participant in IMS’ recent Kyrgyzstan Media Sector Collaboration Meeting. The meeting brought together a range of international and national media and media development organisations.

The international organisations met to give an insight in their present projects in Kyrgyzstan and to share their challenges, future project ideas and to try to agree on the most important trends and problems of the Kyrgyz media right now.

According to the positive feedback from the 48 participants the meeting turned out to be even more important than expected not only for the international implementers but also for representatives of local media outlets and local media NGOs.

The meeting also included three presentations by local Kyrgyz media experts on the following topics: Who is who in the Kyrgyz media, a research study presented by Marat Tokoev, the chairman of Public Association of Journalists. The final results of the research is planned to be published ultimo July 2013. Moreover, the Kyrgyz media Expert, Alexander Kulinski, presented the biggest challenges that Kyrgyz TV and radio is facing, including the complicated and potentially devastating transition to digital broadcasting in mid-2015. Furthemore, the latest exiting developments of the Kyrgyz on-line and new media were presented by Bektour Iskender from Kloop Media Foundation.

Last but not least, a new concept of pitching project ideas was presented at the meeting. IMS invited local media NGOs and media outlets to present their best new project idea in a so-called elevator pitch of just five minutes. This turned out to be very popular and got very positive response both from international implementers and local representatives. As one of the participants aid in the evaluation:

“I was especially impressed with the pitching session. We hope it will become a good tradition here, and we are glad to assist and participate in the future.”

The next meeting is planned to take place during the autumn of 2013.