Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you all! I’ll take this opportunity to wish you all a happy and peaceful Christmas time. I hope you and your families have a great time.

Whilst a White Christmas may not happen, it’ll certainly be a very cold Christmas in Ulaanbaatar! There are a few signs of Christmas here (despite the fact that Mongolia is a Buddhist country). Most of the hotels and shopping centres have Christmas trees positioned by their entrances. Some buildings also have colourful lights wrapped around them. However, the locals are keen to point out that these decorations are not for Christmas, but are part of the build up for the New Year celebrations. Indeed, the local TV stations are running what Westerners would call ‘Christmas-themed’ programmes (with the hosts dressed as Father Christmas, sitting in front of log fires), but end the programmes with the message “Happy 31st” flashing across the screen!

As a special Christmas treat, I’m including video clips in this week’s blog entry. Have a look at my moment of fame, making it onto Erdenet regional TV! It’s a clip taken during last month’s visit to Erdenet with Amnesty International (see http://rob-in-mongolia.blogspot.com/2007/11/on-tour-with-amnesty-international.html for more details). I’m talking about the volunteering efforts that the local schoolchildren were doing in the city. Enjoy!

There's also a short clip of me talking to Darkhan's local TV channel. I'm speaking fluent Mongolia, and seem to have developed a rather feminine voice! (ok, it's Otgo the head of Amnesty Mongolia's volunteer programme who is translating)

As always, lots of love from Ulaanbaatar,

Robert

Phew, International Volunteer Day is done and dusted!

Phew – International Volunteer Day is done and dusted. It was great fun, a real showcase for Mongolia’s volunteer community. As an outsider looking in, I was really impressed with what Mongolia’s volunteers are doing. As International Volunteer Day was a couple of days after my last blog entry, there are a few more events for me to report on…

Ceremony for Chingeltei District’s Health Volunteers – A local health department had trained 19 volunteers to provide health education and basic treatment to the public. On Wednesday it was time to officially unveil the volunteers, so a ceremony was put on to celebrate their achievement. It was very touching to see the volunteers collect their ‘graduation’ certificates. They were all so humble. A really nice touch was that each volunteer was individually introduced to the audience, complete with a list of their likes and dislikes. “This is Bold, 44 years old, who likes going to the movies and eating buuz”! I think this volunteer scheme is a great idea, as the health volunteers free up the overworked doctors, allowing them to work in other areas.

The Grand Finale, a Cocktail Party - on the evening of the 5th many of Mongolia's volunteer community (both staff at volunteering organisations and the volunteers themselves) got together for a celebratory drinks party. However, due to funding difficulties the cocktails were sadly absent! We did however manage to get the head of Mongolia's UN Development Programme to come to speak to us. She delivered the UN Secretary General's message for the volunteering community (everyone listened very attentively). The evening was a success in so much as everyone had a good time, but I hope next year the International Volunteer Day team decide to run a different event (it just seemed a bit of a waste of money, when some of the organisations present would have probably prefered moeny for new office equipment rather than a nice evening of wining and dining).

Amnesty International's supermarket petition - the 10th of December is International Human Rights Day (the UN calendar is crazy, it seems to bunch everything together in December!). To mark this day, Amnesty International's volunteers went out into Ulaanbaatar to do a big petition-signing/fundraising drive. 30 volunteers were sent to 9 of the city's biggest supermarkets and set up stalls. I went along to our local Nomin Supermarket to help out (it was my job to get any foreigners who passed by to sign the petition). I really enjoyed getting back to running a campaign stall, it reminded me of the type of things I used to do when I was at university. Aside from just being there to help out the very kind volunteers, my main highlight was an exchange that I had from a member of the Russian Embassy staff who just happened to be passing through. She was very pleasant, but found it really strange that I would be bothering to campaign about human rights... On a side point, it seems that the only foreigners left in Ulaanbaatar at the moment either work as volunteers, embassy staff or in the mining companies. As temperatures are now averaging -15C a day, tourists are nowhere to be seen!

I hope all of your Christmas preparations are going well. Lots of love from Mongolia,

Robert

International Volunteer Day

There's been a real explosion of activity from the volunteering sector, which can only mean one thing - International Volunteer Day (5th Dec don't you know) is just round the corner! I've had a lot of fun the last couple of days, attending lots of events that have been run by various members of the volunteer network I work for. Here's my top 3:

World AIDS Day Art Exhibition- As some of you may know, the first of December is World AIDS Day. The National AIDS Foundation tried to publicise this to the wider community by running an art exhibition in a gallery not far from Parliament Square. The exhibition showcased the work of the city's students. I was very impressed with the standard and creativity of the various entries. All in all I think the day was a success, especially as a couple of national TV stations showed up.

Concert for the elderly and isolated - A really touching event. On Sunday the organisation Service for Peace ran its now annual cultural festival. The event aimed to provide an evening of enjoyment to many of Ulaanbaatar’s vulnerable and isolated people, and was run by volunteers. During the day 150 volunteers went out into the city's outskirts and gathered approximately 1000 disabled and elderly people, pretty impressive I think. Seeing the smiles on the audience's faces was really a beautiful sight - everyone had a great time.

International Disability Day - the 3rd of December was National Disability Day, so volunteers helped the Wheelchair Users Association celebrate through an event called “My Capital City”. 14 wheelchair-bound people visited various sites around the city (the City Council Office, the Mobicom mobile phone centre, the APU drinks factory and Tengis Movie Theatre). The aim of this was twofold: to illustrate how difficult it is for disabled people to access most buildings in the city, and to give the disabled people a chance to see parts of the city they do not usually get to see.

You can see photos of all these events at http://picasaweb.google.com/schliner/InternationalVolunteerDayEvents. Enjoy!

Tomorrow is International Volunteer Day itself, and we have a couple of things planned then. I'll tell you all about it next week...