A Selfless Pursuit to Help Others Moves a Young Kyrgyz Half Way Around the World

Now residing in Vienna, Virginia, a half-hour drive from Washington D.C., with her older sister, brother-in-law and two nephews, ages 9 and 7, Airina Malieva becomes emotional when talking about the family she left behind thousands of miles away in her home country of Kyrgyzstan, in Central Asia. Though she experiences homesickness, she doesn’t let it slow her down. If anything, what she’s missed most—her family and life in Kyrgyzstan—have emboldened her. “My parents sent me here to study,” she reminds herself, “so, it has been my priority to study and be successful in that.”

Malieva has grown accustomed to the complexities of life, which have driven her self-determination to serve her people one day. She has lived through the setbacks that have affected Kyrgyz economically over the last few decades. More recently, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic has stretched household incomes even thinner with a recession beginning in 2020 that saw the economy contracting by 8.6 percent and debt increasing to 60 percent, according to findings from a 2022 International Monetary Fund report.

But those are just reports that do little to paint a picture of what Malieva describes as real people facing with real issues, like “housing, an unstable economy, and people just struggling to have a normal life, struggling to get quality, higher education.”

Malieva first became aware of the resilience of her fellow Kyrgyz during the two revolutions of the 2000s. In 2005 and again in 2010, Kyrgyzstan experienced two uprisings. Both resulted in the ousting of government leadership in Kyrgyzstan. And with both situations, there were lives lost. “When those political revolutions started to affect my family directly,” she says, “it really hit me. And I realized that there is something that needs to be done to change that.”

From these tragic events, Malieva recognized at a young age she would have to leave the country to accomplish something for herself, her family and her country. By the time she was just 6 years old and already in elementary, she had already begun acting toward study aboard. She began preparing by first teaching herself English and later taking ESL classes at school. Outside of her lessons, Malieva sought extracurricular activities in which she could familiarize herself with the language. By the time, she entered her last years of high school, Malieva was spending five to six hours a day learning English and preparing for university exams and TOEFL. “I started consuming all the media and everything that I could interact with,” she says looking back, “I tried to immerse myself in sort of that environment early.”

Her commitment to her cause and determination led her first to Canada in 2017 and then to the United States a year and half later. This first experience abroad became essential to understanding herself as a new person. Alone and away from her parents and friends, life took on a new meaning. “I had to adjust to taking full responsibility of my life and, being from fruition, from being a child, to being a full on adult,” she says, adding that it was her mother’s constant reminder of her focus that gave her strength. “It was difficult, and she was always reminding me of my goals, why I am here.”

But Malieva is quick to credit her parents as the source of her selfless pursuit toward caring for others. Her mother and father, both entrepreneurs, grew up in the Issyk Kul region, in northeast Kyrgyzstan, and imparted values that navigate Malieva and her siblings today. “They have been able to instill the right values and morals in us,” Malieva says, “ and despite the fact we [she and her sister] have been living abroad, I still have that foundation.”

Those values have come in handy, especially after moving to the US in mid-2018, when she enrolled at Northern Virginia Community College, in Annadale. Malieva focused on achieving her childhood dream of serving her people and began working toward an associate of science degree in political science. While there, semester after semester, she made the Dean’s List which recognized her stellar grades. When she graduated in the summer of 2019, she accumulated a 3.59 GPA out of 4.0.

That same fall, she joined George Mason University’s Global Affairs Department as an undergraduate, with a concentration in global governance. Academically, she excelled, earning consistently high grades that again placed her on the Dean’s List every semester until she graduated. And although she graduated with a 3.97, GPA, she says her grades were meant only for her. “It was a direct measurement of how much time and effort I’ve put in. … Today I was able to achieve what I intended to achieve,” she says.

Malieva also measured her success by how much time she devoted outside of the classroom. That’s because, as she puts it, employers in the US do not give much attention to grade point average. “It’s about your skills, your soft skills as well as art skills, as well as the way you portray yourself to other people,” she advises.

And that’s exactly what she did—she branched out. While at George Mason, she took on extra projects outside of class, joining Pi Gamma Mu, an international honor society for social science majors, which she is still active in. She also participated in weekly discussions as a member of the Model United Nations Student Club and joined the Central Asian Student Association. In reaching outward, Malieva was able to find within the university’s diversity a sense of belonging and direction. “I was able to meet lifelong friends,” she says after admitting how “their experiences had definitely made my day-to-day life at the university brighter.”

And from those friendships and university experiences, she was able to come face to face with issues she felt resonated with her, that drove her to where she is. But it was her Kyrgyz identity that provided her with the depth of understanding she achieved. Focusing on gender inequality, unstable governments and helping the vulnerable, she realized, “Being from Kyrgyzstan … helped me understand those topics more in depth, and having that experience myself, motivated me even more,” she says.

But for all that success, it was from her time volunteering for the United Help Ukraine in March of this year at Falls Church, Virginia, that Malieva most draws inspiration. The nonprofit organization, first formed in 2014, eight years later was reeling from the mass relocation of Ukrainians from their homeland into neighboring countries. United Help Ukraine focused on sending humanitarian aid and medical equipment, and funding relocation efforts. Malieva, for her part, was instrumental in establishing places of refuge for displaced peoples heading toward Poland. The experience impressed heavily on Malieva, who says, “I can’t even imagine the pain that they have to go through, and the kinds of memories they would carry with themselves their whole lives.”

Having just finished George Mason University with an undergraduate degree in global governance, Malieva has since had a change of heart, career wise. She now attends Syntax, a technology bootcamp based in Virginia. Juggling virtual classes and watching over her sister’s two children, Malieva hopes to be done with the program by the end of this year. As for her reason for the change, she points to its benefits: from being able to connect with more people through technology to gaining financial independence.

But this hasn’t distracted from her dreams. Though she is still unsure how to merge global affairs with her new IT skills, she is adamant on finding a way to connect both worlds. “I’ll be able to figure it out,” she says assuredly. “I’ll do that.”