Currently building: Cohort 05

Build your team.
Build the future.

ConnectED gives students in Uzbekistan three weeks to turn an idea into something real — a team, a plan, a working first version, and proof to themselves that they can build things.

Join the next cohort See how it works

Connect · Learn · Innovate · Impact

A ConnectED participant holding up the program's passport booklet in a park — Every cohort gets its own passport — stamped, page by page.

Cohort 1 participants holding their ConnectED passports under a tree

Cohort participants making heart shapes with their hands, photographed from below

How it started

Too many good ideas were staying in the notebook

Students in Uzbekistan don't lack ideas. They show up to workshops and hackathons full of energy — and then go home with nothing to actually build. Temurmalikova Zumradxon and Khaitova Mushtariy, ConnectED's co-founders, started ConnectED to close that gap.

Not a lecture series. Not a one-day workshop. A real three-week sprint, done as a team, that ends with something you can put in front of another person. The first cohort met with a stack of hand-made passport booklets, a whiteboard, and no idea if anyone would actually show up. They did — and every cohort since has kept the same shape: connect with people who want to build something, learn just enough to get moving, innovate on a real idea, and feel the impact for yourself.

Co-founded by Zumradxon & Mushtariy

Pages of the ConnectED passport booklet, showing the Explore, Create and Final Reflection levels

The three weeks

One notebook, three weeks, one working project

1

Explore

Cohorts open with participants saying yes to something they don't know how to do yet — and meeting the team they'll build it with.
2

Create — Level 5

Teams turn ideas into action by filling out a team canvas together: what problem they're solving, who it's for, what their first version looks like, and how they'll present it the next day.
3

Reflect & present

Every cohort closes by writing down the most inspiring person they met, the best idea they heard, and one thing they learned about themselves — then presenting for real, certificates included.

In their own words

What participants say

Straight from the sticky notes at the end of each cohort.

Testimonial from Madina, ConnectED participant

Testimonial from Iskandar, ConnectED Cohort 2 participant

Testimonial from Muborak, ConnectED participant

Testimonial from Marjona, ConnectED participant, in Uzbek

Testimonial from Adham, ConnectED participant

Testimonial from Kimyonisa, ConnectED participant

Cohorts, in pictures

Trees, stamped booklets, and a lot of sticky notes

Snapshots from Cohort 1 and Cohort 4 — the moments that don't make it onto a certificate.

Two participants forming a heart with their hands, reading 'Holdin' the Future', with the rest of the cohort behind them — "Holdin' the future" — Cohort 1, closing day.

A screen displaying 'Cohort 4, Let's Go!' in a pixel-art style, with a participant's ID card in front — Kickoff screen — Cohort 4.

Three participants holding their certificates of participation at a cafe — Certificates, fresh out of the folder.

A group of Cohort 4 participants posing in front of the Cohort 4 screen — Cohort 4 — full group.

A facilitator presenting the 3B Framework — Belonging, Benefit, Belief — on a screen — The 3B Framework, mid-session.

A snack table with an icebreaker prompt written on a paper cup: ask someone to describe themselves using a movie title — Icebreakers, snack table edition.

Certificates and play-money bills with participants' photos laid out on a table — Certificates and a very fake fortune.

A cohort posing on stage with their certificates, with Space Coworking, proweb and SheLeads Uzbekistan logos on screen behind them — Closing ceremony, with the partners on screen.

Part of a bigger circle

ConnectED didn't build this alone

Around ConnectED is a small web of youth-led projects across Uzbekistan — many of them started or run by ConnectED alumni. We share their channels because they're worth following too.