In Belarus there exists a strong blog-culture. One of the reasons for that is basically absolute absence of any possibility for young people to express themselves outside the Internet. In the environment where independent students and youth organizations are banned and NGOs are gradually dying out every year while their activists are all the time prosecuted, and in the streets even street artists get arrested many young people rely on blogs as the space of self expression. They use them to discuss topics from daily life to politics and international development. At the moment Belarus is on the 13th place in the rating of Livejournal users in the world with more than 20000 registered users. Trying to follow the trend Generation.bY is encouraging the development of this sphere in so called BY-Net and we are regularly making announcements about events connected to Blogs as well as soon starting our own project directed on support of Belarusian bloggers. Continue reading…
On the 19th of September many Internet geeks were celebrating the Birthday of the first emoticon :-) created by Professor Scott Fallman in 1982. In Belarus this date coincides with the adoption of the new state symbols of independent Belarus in 1991 which once changed the soviet national symbols. While serious established newspapers and online resources were writing historical articles about the origin of the state symbols and young people were congratulating each other with the Day of a Smiley, generation.by team connected all in one. We presented to BY-net a new set of adopted Belarusian smileys – 15 funny emoticons with red-white-red flags which became a hit in the BY-net this autumn. 
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A story about another student expelled have become nothing more than a weekly routine in Belarus. Today’s post will touch on the story of another expelled student – Zmicer Zhaleznichenka and on the meeting of the Belarusian students in exile to be held in Vilnius in October.
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Life of young people in Belarus is balancing between the past and the future, a desperate attempt to escape from the Soviet past and to catch up with the pace of the world’s development no matter what barriers the state or other countries create for that. The struggle has become something natural. At present it has stepped with a heavy foot also into the field of culture and music most of all. In Belarus you will not see street artists (except for very rare cases), police presence has become a norm during the performances of “Free theater” and banned rock groups have no other way to meet their public but arrange concerts outside the country.
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The first week of the academic year began with many people speaking about education in Belarus and what kind of changes should be made. The post introduces you to some of the topics discussed in Belarus at the beginning of September. Among them: introduction of the Educational Code; strengthening of ideological work; internships for students and university teachers; increase of scholarships and changes to study programs, etc.
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