Samsung Electronics today announced the launch of Samsung Newsroom Kazakhstan in the Kazakh language, aiming to reach more Kazakh customers curious about the latest innovations in technology.

Starting today, Kazakh-speaking users and partners will be able to access the most up-to-date information on Samsung’s new devices, solutions and IT trends in their native language.

▲ Users can now easily access the latest Samsung news and information on brand events in Kazakhstan.

Samsung Newsroom Kazakhstan will keep users informed about the exciting events that the company organizes in Kazakhstan, from product launches and B2B conferences to unique events and giveaways featuring valuable prizes. Additionally, local residents will have the opportunity to participate in these events firsthand and create memorable experiences.

“Sharing Samsung news in Kazakh is a great way for us to connect and communicate with our users in Kazakhstan and abroad who are passionate about Samsung,” said Berik Umarov, Head of Corporate Communications at Samsung Electronics Central Eurasia. “We will continue to expand our Kazakh content to ensure that everyone can access valuable information.”

Samsung Newsroom Kazakhstan in the Kazakh language is the company’s 46th newsroom to date, following the Global Newsroom, as well as local editions in the United States, Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, India, Germany, Russia, Mexico, the U.K., Argentina, Malaysia, Italy, South Africa, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Taiwan, among others.

Samsung has been a mainstay in Kazakhstan since 1996. Operating under the name Samsung Electronics Central Eurasia, the Kazakhstan office oversees operations not only in Kazakhstan but also in neighboring Central Asian countries including Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Mongolia.

For more information about Samsung’s latest innovations and activities in Kazakhstan, visit news.samsung.com/kz_kz.

This article is based on an original essay by Eunsung Lee from Samsung Electronics’ Mobile Communications Division,
and was edited by Samsung Newsroom

Last February, Samsung Electronics announced its vision for its global citizenship program – Enabling People. The company has been running numerous volunteer youth education programs for over a decade, and since the recent announcement has been strengthening the programs it offers in the interests of enabling young citizens the world over.

For Samsung’s employee volunteer initiative OneWeek, around 200 Samsung employees traveled to six different countries – Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Nepal and Hungary – to engage in collaborative activities with local communities.

I was part of the second volunteer team to travel who visited Kazakhstan, a country 27 times the size of my native Korea but with less than half the population. There, we participated in activities like showing children how to use computers and teaching them about coding. I was pleased to have been given the opportunity as, in order to take part in Samsung OneWeek, employees have to be ready to use up five days of their annual leave – but competition for the program was still fierce.

Getting to Know the Kazakh Community

Despite extensive preparation and constant review of our education materials during the long journey to Kazakhstan, we were still inevitably nervous once we arrived to greet the children we would be volunteering for and spending time with.

At first meeting, they appeared cautious, but even as we formulated the best way to introduce ourselves, they quickly broke out into boisterous cries of welcome.

Following that, the local students entertained us with songs and dance performances they had prepared. Us OneWeek members provided snacks and toys to the mix, and quickly, our nervous first meeting had become a party.

One member of our team even broke into funny faces to make the children laugh, and soon enough we were chatting and having fun as if we had known each other much longer than a matter of hours.

Education Against All the Odds

After this opportunity to get to know the children, we busied ourselves with immersing ourselves in their daily lives. By contrast to the school start times we were accustomed to back in Korea, we learnt that these Kazakh children arrived to school around 10am.

In order to fully understand this daily routine, we traveled on the school bus that departs their area, a village near the border, at 6am every morning. Having traveled along a dirt road for hours to reach the Mynjylyk area, we encountered a military barrack complete with guard checks, an obstacle in this daily journey that is due to the proximity of the border. Having gone through this sobering experience, we were happy to finally greet the children and join them as they began the school day.

Technology for Good

Once at the childrens’ school, our volunteering activities began in earnest. We taught children how to use Scratch, a universal coding methodology. Despite the difficulty of the subject, the language barrier and the resulting slow rate of progress, the children were enthusiastic and eager to learn throughout – we found ourselves often conveying key messages to each other through body language alone.

Given that a primary means of employment in this mountainous area of Kazakhstan is livestock rearing, we also held educational IT sessions for local nomads, many of whom had never even seen a computer before but who approached the task with just as much enthusiasm and determination to learn as the children had.

Experiences from the Heart

Our time in Kazakhstan was a gift to all of us who went, but we were especially touched when, upon the conclusion of our time with them, one child brought us a gift of hand-milked local horse milk. Such generosity inspired us to return, and to work harder at our next volunteering opportunities to give back and share as much as we can.

Every member of the Samsung OneWeek in Kazakhstan team had a great time sharing their knowledge to the best of their abilities and engaging with the local community despite obstacles. We hope that the Kazakh people we met will remember us, the teachers in blue, just as we will never forget the heartfelt gifts and experiences they gave us.

The idea for a wearable device for nomadic livestock came about through Samsung Tomorrow Solutions (STS), a competition for social contribution endeavors hosted by Samsung Electronics. The winner of the 2017 STS Grand Prize, a project named ‘Lives’Talk’, was proposed by a team of members with previous experience of living in Kazakhstan as a way to mitigate one of the biggest challenges faced by Kazakh nomadic communities, this being the amount of time taken to source and retrieve livestock in rural areas.

Following their 2017 STS win, Lives’Talk launched as its own company in 2018. In order to then make their idea a reality, Lives’Talk worked with a team from the Samsung C-Lab, Samsung Electronics’ internal venture training center. The realized product is a device capable of being attached to the backs of livestock for sturdy transmission.

Keeping Track of Livestock For a Living

Finding livestock that have been put out to pasture in rural Kazakhstan is the primary job of many nomads, but given the expansive terrain of this farmland, many animals are lost to predators if not found by nightfall. Given the arduous nature of these risky yet crucial tasks faced in Kazakh livestock farming, the number of nomadic farmers is fast decreasing.

Once attached to the livestock with a dedicated belt, the wearable GPS transmitter-receiver will track its location in real-time.

In order to help mitigate these problems, the Lives’Talk team came up with a wearable device for livestock that harnesses a GPS transmitter-receiver and relay for real-time livestock tracking and management. Not only does this device effectively reduce the amount of time taken to find livestock but it can also solve the issue of missing livestock. Furthermore, the device also converts livestock information collected in real time into data useful for managing the entire livestock farming process, from raising to selling.

Taking Action

Lives’Talk’s pilot wearable device for livestock project will take place over two months at 50 pastures in Mynjylyk and Boleksaz, the two nomadic areas near Almaty, Kazakhstan, following the donation of the devices by Lives’Talk and Samsung to the nomadic communities there.

Samsung is not only supporting Lives’Talk’s pilot project but has also dispatched employee volunteers to help realize the project. These employee volunteers will train the recipients of the livestock tracking devices on how to use the devices and their wider tech ecosystem, providing entrepreneurial advice to help the farmers in these communities become independent.

“Samsung Electronics endeavors to recognize and promote individual talent and ability to the end of generating solutions that can help people,” noted Sang-woo Han. “With these wearable devices for nomadic livestock and the volunteer efforts of our employees, we hope not only to solve an issue specific to these Kazakh areas but also to make the future of the residents brighter.”

For more information on Lives’Talk, please follow this link.