We are the team of like-minded volunteers. We are at the Academy of Civic Education.
We invite you to be a part of ASHAR, an ancient practice of our ancestors, which is now also known as crowdfunding. We are raising funds for translation and publication of a book. We are reaching out to you to join us in Educating. It is your input to development and progress of our society. Let’s revive the culture of reading in Kyrgyzstan.
“Have the Mountains Fallen?” is a biography of two prominent persons in history of Kyrgyzstan – Chingiz Aitmatov and Azamat Altai. Their journeys is a story of free spirit and self-expression of our people. Two mountains which invested to literature and freedom. Two mountains which anticipated and saw the sovereignty of Kyrgyzstan.
It so happened that saying “no one is a prophet in one’s homeland” still holds true to our society. We rarely value our prophets. We remember little about ourselves, and leave little knowledge to our future generation.
Jeffrey B. Lilley is the author of the book, who spent 10 years studying the lives of our heroes. He studied archives, interviewed and traced back their work. He had a chance to talk to one of them, and study the other from archive materials and radio “Svoboda”. The author thinks of two characters as his motivators – “They are strong personalities important not only for Kyrgyzstan, but for global community.”
This year Chigiz Aitmatov would turn 90 years. He is well-known to the whole World. His cranes still bring us stories from the Second World War. Those stories are of struggles of people who gave birth to us.
We know less about Azamat Altai, adding that the Soviet Propaganda aimed at discrediting him. He is a person who went through war, captivity, struggles of settling into a new country, and experiencing vast longing for his motherland – for his favorite Issyk-Kul. Even from the other side of the Ocean, he would worry about people’s freedom back in his homeland. Today radio “Azattyk” (branch of radio “Svoboda”) – is a story of freedom beyond Kyrgyzstan.
We can’t move forward without voice of cranes that brought us freedom.
“It was my duty to write this book. I need to tell the stories of these individuals. World needs to know about them,” says Jeffrey. His book is published in English in Indiana University. It will be presented in leading universities and at the US Library of Congress. “The book should also be available for readers in Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan is a wonderful country, its people are open and wise. I would like to share the book,” says Jeffrey.
The author provides us the translation and publication rights at no cost. But we need to finance it on our own. Thus, we call you to ASHAR – our crowdfunding for publishing the Book in Kyrgyz and Russian.
With the generous gift from Jeff, we start the publishing of a series of books. Our next project will be about “Personal Stories”. They are saved in our families’ stories of our ancestors and often don’t correlate with official information.
It is our duty to raise funds and publish our stories. We follow the footsteps of our ancestors to collect our memories and leave behind to our future generation using ASHAR practice.
You can invest in several ways:
- Share about our initiative in social media. Let’s spread this idea among people who care about development of our Kyrgyzstan.
- You can donate money via:
| Получатель: | Public Association Center Polis Asia/Общественное Объединение Центр Полис Азия |
| Банк получателя: | ЗАО «Кыргызский Инвестиционный-Кредитный Банк» Бишкек, КР |
| Счет получателя: | 1280166046670097 KGS1280166046670404 USD1280166046670606 EUR |
| БИК: | 128016 |
| SWIFT | KICBKG22 |