It’s been an exciting month here, particularly in financial terms. At the end of January, Global Giving transferred the funds to us that were raised during our successful Changemaker fundraising campaign last year. However, this being Central Asia, there were a few complications relating to the paperwork, which meant that it took a little while for our bank to release that money to us.
Although this was a frustrating delay, it turned out rather well. Whilst we waited, Kazakhstan’s currency (Tenge) was suddenly devalued by about 20% against foreign currencies. When we were finally able to convert the money from the transferred Dollars into Tenge, it was worth about 20% more than it would have been in January! Needless to say, we will put the money to good use.
Another venture last month was our attempt to get some free software from Microsoft. As a company, they pride themselves on helping NGOs around the world by giving away software worth millions of dollars each year – so we thought we’d try and get in on some of it! Of course, being Microsoft the process got a little complicated at times, and there wasn’t always an option to select for Kazakhstan.
We also had to try and select a reasonable array of products to request – enough that if we only received some they would still be useful, but not too much that we might appear greedy. Anyway, after a short wait we were very surprised and delighted to be told we had been given everything that we asked for! See «Village by Numbers» for the value – quite a donation. This puts us in a very good position to be able to continue our work here with the resources that we need – thanks Microsoft!!!
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