Hello, I'm Jim Hilgendorf. Welcome to America's Dialogue.
America's Dialogue grew out of a desire to create a national platform for dialogue on specific important issues facing us today,
The first America's Dialogue was America's Dialogue I, on the issue of nuclear weapons, which centered around a video we produced and mailed out to discussion groups all over the country in April, 2007.
Next came America's Dialogue II, a similar project on health care.
In the first part of 2009, my brother John and I traveled around the country to twenty-one universities to interview over 200 students about their views of what was really important to them about the future of our country, now that we had a new President. This was America's Dialogue III.
AMERICA'S DIALOGUE IV
INTERNATIONAL
YOUTH FORUM
KAZAKHSTAN
__________
Before I began this project on Kazakhstan, I had no knowledge of the country or its people at all. I began by interviewing Mrs. Byrganym Aitimova, a most gracious woman, and the current ambassador to the United Nations from Kazakhstan. We spoke and recorded an interview via Skype.
Her advisor, Gauhar Abdygaliyeva, then helped me contact Kazakhstan students around the world, and I videotaped them on Skype also.
I came to know the new emerging country of Kazakhstan through the words of these young Kazakhstan students, and it has been a wonderful experience for me personally.
I learned so much, and I hope you will too by listening to these voices of Kazakhstan's future. The history and culture of Kazakhstan have much to teach us.
TO HEAR FROM THE
STUDENTS OF KAZAKHSTAN,
Readings About America by Jim Hilgendorf
