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Hello! Here, I am Vadim Boreiko and the HyperBorei channel. Between February 11 and 14, USAID Deputy Administrator Isobel Coleman visited Kazakhstan.

Ms. Deputy Administrator, thanks so much for joining us today, and welcome to Kazakhstan. USAID has been a strategic partner of the Kazakh government since 1992, if I’m not mistaken, and in 30 years we have developed our relationship by working on various projects.

We all know how incredibly important this work is, especially during these times of increasing mis and disinformation. It is terrific to see curriculum being developed for young people, seeing games and online tutorials to help people understand media literacy. I saw posters that have been disseminated online too to make people aware of the dangers of the online world, of spending too much time on social media and not being thoughtful about what they are hearing and seeing.

It really is a pleasure to be here. It’s my first trip to Kazakhstan. I had the honor of speaking in December 2021 at the U.S.-Kazakhstan celebration of our 30th anniversary of our relations in Washington. I met some of your leaders then, and I made a promise that I would come to Kazakhstan. We do have a very long relationship, it goes back to the earliest days of the birth of Kazakhstan and before me it has been a long time, as you said, I think it is 22 years exactly since Administrator Natsios was last here.

Today, the United States Embassy in Kazakhstan joins the world in marking the 20th anniversary of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history. Since 2003, the U.S. Government has invested $50 million to support Kazakhstan’s fight against HIV/AIDS through PEPFAR. 

Today, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Central Asia Media Program launched the fourth annual MediaCAMP Eduthon. The five-day online seminar on media and digital literacy will bring together educators and content producers from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan for training, information sharing, and collaboration.