Initial situation regarding BPN in Osh
In 2004, 5 years after the start of BPN in Kyrgyzstan, an office was opened in Osh as well as in Bishkek. At the best times we employed 3 staff members there and enjoyed up to 15 new program participants per year.
However, Osh was shaken by ethnic conflicts and riots, which also claimed lives. As a result of these ethnic conflicts, the Uzbeks have partly left the Osh region in recent years. After each further revolt, BPN lost local program participants as well as staff, until the location was finally reduced to a minimum with a 50% staff in recent years. Apart from a few seminars per year, the latter concentrated more on maintaining the existing contacts. Thus, no new selections have been made for quite some time.
"Stop or Go" strategy
BPN decided to proceed in 2022 according to the motto "Stop or Go" in Osh. Due to the economic potential in the region, we decided to increase the traffic light to "Go" and our activities in this region again to use the existing potential. Osh is mainly home to enterprises in agriculture, cotton/sheep breeding, tourism, dried fruits/melons and tobacco. Dried fruit, water melons and honeydew melons from Osh are also supplied as the main export products to numerous Eastern European countries.
Recently, a new employee was recruited as head of the Osh site. I dealt with this challenging task and finally found the right person for the BPN network on site in Kubanychbek Karashev (Kuban for short). Kuban is the husband of a former BPN entrepreneur who runs a private training and language center. Kuban lives in Osh and is originally from the Issyk-Kulsee region.
By the end of the year, the first seminars and selections are to take place in Osh. Kuban will be supported by our strong team in Bishkek as well as by Country Director Thomas Lauwiner. We wish Kuban a good start!
Challenges Osh 2022
The south of Kyrgyzstan - and thus also Osh - suffers somewhat more from the Ukraine war than the rest of the country. Approximately every fifth Kyrgyz works in Russia, of which more than half come from the south. Often people in the south live in clans - an association of several families - with a good 3 children per family. The (good) Russian wages are paid in rubles and sometimes support entire clans. Currency fluctuations are thus very noticeable in Osh.
In addition, supply chains from Russia are interrupted, which poses challenges for local entrepreneurs in terms of deliveries of spare parts. In some cases, alternatives from China are available, but these are associated with extremely long delivery times. In addition, I have experienced on site that the general price increases in the country pose additional challenges for the entrepreneurs.
Highlight of the trip
The highlight turned out to be the meeting with a former BPN program participant who runs a health clinic. She had managed to almost triple her business during the last two pandemic years. She has continuously expanded her clinic and it is now almost up to European standards. She is planning further expansions, for example by adding an additional building. I captured a few impressions of this visit with my camera.
