New NGO guide popular among journalists

A new guide on civil society in Kazakhstan issued with assistance from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is gaining popularity among journalists in the Central Asian state, bridging the gap between the two sectors. "The idea behind publishing this guide is to establish a relationship between the NGOs and the mass media. We launched this project with the aim of bridging the gap between them," Nikolay Orininski, a programme manager with MediaNet, a local centre for supporting and developing journalism, said on Thursday from the Kazakh commercial capital of Almaty. "The guide includes the list of 144 NGOs from 12 provinces of the country, their contact information, missions and area of activity and their plans for this year, etc," Orininski explained. The guide helps the journalists understand what various NGOs are working on and also has a section with information about experts on civil society. "There are more than 50 experts in that list with their contact details and brief CVs so that journalists can contact them and request information or comments," he noted. According to MediaNet, there was strong demand for such a directory. "NGOs keep a record of vast information valuable for the media and there is no way to access it. For example, when journalists work on the issues related to civil society they usually request information from the state bodies… which does not [necessarily] reveal all the facts," Orininski maintained. Around 200 copies that were published in late December had been distributed within a week and following high demand for the product, MediaNet decided to print more copies. "We are going to publish 1,000 more copies in the coming two to three weeks. We are also working on issuing a new version of the guide to cover 1,000 NGOs in the whole of the country. This new guide will be more comprehensive and more user-friendly for journalists." According to the Kazakh justice ministry, there are more than 5,000 registered NGOs in the country, of whom some 1,000 are said to be operational. "So our goal is to cover those 1,000 operational NGOs," he noted.