From September 17 to October 25, within the framework of the Peacebuilding Fund project "Promoting Kyrgyzstan's Youth Cohesion and Interaction towards Uzbekistan", the events among school youth of Aidarken in Kadamjay district were held. Aidarken, with the population of more than 10 thousand people is multinational town, with Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Russians residents. There are three schools in the city that provide education in different languages

In order to strengthen interethnic relations among youth, training sessions were held on the premises of Aydarken schools to develop tolerance, inter-ethnic cohesion and eradicate stereotypes in the intercultural environment. 12 teachers of Aidarken, who previously attended ToT sessions on “Inter-Ethnic Tolerance and Peacebuilding”, conducted these specially designed training sessions. 36 joint online sessions were provided for 129 high school students.

According to Aziza, the 11th grade of the Russian-speaking school No. 20, she practically did not know any Kyrgyz or Tajik students who are living in Aidarken and thanks to joint learning, she was able to meet and even make friends with several of them. "It was a great experience and a chance to make new friends from other schools. It turned out that we have a lot in common and there are many common topics that concern us all," she said.

In addition to training at the classes, participants of the online training sessions took part in a competition for the best video on friendship and tolerance. The peculiarity of the contest was a requirement, that only mixed teams of students from different schools of the town were eligible to participate. As a result, 11 teams were formed, who in a short period were able to shoot and upload to social networks 20 videos under the hashtag #достуктуншаарыайдаркен.

"While we were shooting the video, we got to know each other even better than we did during online lessons, we had to quickly learn to work in a team, invent a script and do editing. There were disputes, of course, but more important that our team was able to find a common ground and shoot 2 videos - the winners of the 1st place and the main prize!" - says Dilfuza, a student of the 10th grade of Secondary School № 7 named after A.Firdavsi.

This event was conducted by the NGO "The Border Areas Youth Network" with the support of the United Nations Development Programme, as a part of the UN Peacebuilding Fund Project "Promoting Kyrgyzstan's Youth Cohesion and Interaction towards Uzbekistan", implemented by the UN Agencies in Kyrgyzstan (UNICEF, UNDP and UNFPA) and aimed at supporting the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic in implementation of Cooperation Plans  between the Kyrgyz Republic and Uzbekistan, as well as strengthening social cohesion in border areas.