The central bath house in Almaty

For some time CCSI has been contemplating a new initiative on Central Asia, formerly a part of the Soviet Union, inasmuch as the growth of civil society in this region has been very uneven, and the prospects for democracy in some countries are far from assured. In late spring of 1997, based in part on the success of The Post-Soviet Handbook, the Carnegie Corporation of New York invited Center for Civil Society International to submit a proposal for a discretionary grant of $25,000. CCSI requested partial support for a conference�to be co-sponsored with the Central Asia Institute at Johns Hopkins University�s School of Advanced International Studies�and book on the same theme: the development of civil society in Central Asia.

The grant was awarded, along with a second one in support of the book from the Earhart Foundation, and a new project was launched. In the fall CCSI asked Seattle�s Bryan Bushley, a �silk road� veteran, to spend two months in Central Asia doing field research and Bryan returned at the end of the year with a large amount of data about third sector organizations in the region. This material will go into our forthcoming book, Civil Society in Central Asia, to be co-edited by CCSI board member Dan Waugh and executive director Holt Ruffin.

Bryan Bushley and Holt Ruffin meet with three Kazak activists in Almaty in October

An additional element of the book will be a series of analytical essays on the development of different aspects of civil society in the countries of the region. These will be based upon presentations to be delivered at a conference scheduled to be held at the end of March 1998 at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

CCSI director Holt Ruffin also visited Almaty in October 1997 and there met with Gulmira Jamanova, executive director of CASDIN. At this meeting it was agreed that CCSI would translate excerpts of the CASDIN monthly bulletin, Sustainable Development, and post these to our CivilSoc subscriber list. The first one of these posts occurred on January 22, 1998. These posts, like those of ASI bulletin translations, will also be added to the growing Central Asia section of the CCSI Web site.