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...

Snowy Ulaanbaatar

Last Monday we had a big downpour of snow, which the locals say marks the start of winter. The city looks a lot pretty with it's new white blanket - all the dirt is hidden away underneath the snow. It's pretty chilly, so whilst it hasn't snowed since the city still remains covered. I love it! The only problem is that everything becomes a lot more slippery. For some unknown reason the Mongolian authorities have decided to build all new pavements with very flash paving stones (sometimes using polished marble). The only problem is that these stones give pedestrians no grip what so ever! For a country which is covered with snow/ice for almost a third of the year this seems absolute craziness. Oh well, "at least the pavements look nice"...

My colleagues and I are all gearing up for the most important date of the Mongolian volunteering calendar - International Volunteers Day (5th of December). All the different member organisations of the volunteer network that I work for are planning different events. Service for Peace will be getting its volunteers out on the streets to tell drivers to wear their seat belts. The Donors Association will be visiting university campuses to try to get more young people to sign up to be blood donors. The streets of Ulaanbaatar will be awash with volunteers - hopefully! The big climax of International Volunteers Day will be a cocktail party. I hasten to add that this was not my idea, but hey - maybe it will draw in the politicians and funders... Anyway, during the cocktail party we'll have an awards ceremony which will highlight the work that some Mongolian volunteers are doing. That at least will be a really good thing.

The Hair Cut - As I was beginning to feel self-conscious of the fact that during important meetings I constantly had to brush my hair out of my eyes I felt the time was right to get a hair cut. Thus, this Thursday I popped round to the girls' flat (four of the female VSO volunteers live together) and was 'treated' to a free hair cut. It was very kind of Ruth to volunteer her services. However I think she took too much off - I miss my long hair! Oh well, it will grow back in a month, and I suppose it made me look more smart for...

Trip to Parliament - On Friday I was lucky enough to be invited to a ceremony inside the main parliament building (an honour which not many Mongolians, let alone foreigners have had). The reason - one of the organisations I work with, the Mongolian Youth Federation, was helping to run the annual civic vow event. When Mongolians turn 16 years old, they are expected to pledge their allegiance to the nation and then receive their passport. The event I went to was a ceremonial version of this every day occurrence - one 16 year old from each region of Mongolia was invited to take part in a more formal version of this coming of age ceremony. The event itself was quite interesting. It was a real show of patriotism, with the crowd clutching their breast on several occasions. A brass band played the national anthem, some people recited poetry and a local film star came to sing some traditional songs. It's interesting to see how patriotic the youth of Mongolia are - quite a contrast to young people in the UK.
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Anyway, at the end of the ceremony I managed to have a quick peek around the Parliament building, and what a luxurious building it was! The place was filled with leather seats and full of beautiful artwork. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed anywhere near the main chamber where parliament gathers, but the outer quarters were still a sight for sore eyes...

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Right, back to the 'real world'. I hope all of you are well and are having fun. Best wishes from a slippy Ulaanbaatar,

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Robert

On Tour with Amnesty International Mongolia

This week I went back to one of my favourite pastimes – training young people to be campaigners! Amnesty International Mongolia very kindly invited me along to help them with some training they were doing in two schools in Mongolia, and I couldn’t refuse – I was active as a student with Amnesty back in the UK, and so was exited by the opportunity to help a similar Amnesty youth programme spread in Mongolia. Thus, I packed my bags and headed out with Otgo, Samboo and Gerlee for what proved to be an interesting experience…

We went to visit schools in second and third biggest cities in Mongolia, Erdenet and Darkhan (both to the north of Ulaanbaatar). The plan was to go to two schools and give a select group of the children training on volunteerism and campaigning. It was hoped that this training would lead to the creation of self-sustaining school campaigning groups (groups of children who would be running Amnesty campaigns in the local community). The training would give the young people the skills they would need to run a campaigning group effectively, and built up to one final activity – the youth would go out on the streets and do a campaign for real!

Erdenet – the first group we worked with, and as it turned out, the best. This was a fantastic group of young people who were a real pleasure to be with. The young people were really friendly and welcoming, and were very attentive during their training. They were very enthusiastic as well! One of the groups ran a campaign designed to get shopkeepers to stop selling alcohol to children (much to the displeasure of some shopkeepers!), whilst another group did a campaign about the global arms trade. My Amnesty colleagues and I left Erdenet with mixed emotions – we were sad to say goodbye to a group of really nice young people, but we believed that we had been successful – they should continue campaigning into the future. More generally speaking, Erdenet was a lovely place. Perhaps I was swayed by the blanket of white snow that was covering everything, but it just seemed such a nice, friendly city.

Darkhan – so far so good, but the group at Darkhan was more difficult! The children we ran a training for were from one of Mongolia’s top private schools, and the difference between them and the Erdenet state-school educated youth was instantly visible. Here follows a rant, for which I apologise in advance…

The children’s initial reaction was to be critical of the message we had to bring, and would always have excuses ready as to why they shouldn’t be helping the community out. We regularly encountered statements like “people who are poor are lazy, they can’t be helped”. Also, I was shocked at how rude and arrogant some of the children were. One example was when one young man spilt tea all over the floor and yet did not clean it up. When I (the white foreigner) went to clean it up he said I shouldn’t as it would bring shame to him and his class. Instead I should wait for the cleaner to come and sort it out…

I suppose it’s things like this that really stuck with me, but I shouldn’t let it cloud over the positives from the Darkhan training. The youth did some good campaigns (after a lot of persuasion), and the local media came to do a story on how young people were doing work for the local community. Thus, Amnesty/volunteerism in general got some coverage, which can only be a good thing.

Now I’m back in the big city of Ulaanbaatar. Otgo and I both said it was sad to end our adventure and return to our computer screens in our offices, but I can’t do training all the time I suppose!

November the 9th - Network Meeting Extraordinaire

The culmination of the hard work of the last few weeks occurred on the 9th of November. It was on that date that my colleagues and I hosted a large meeting for the members of the Mongolian Volunteer Network (the organisation that I work for). The aim of the meeting was to get the many member organisations together, and to encourage them to share their skills/experience with each other and create a plan for the future. With these aims in mind I think the meeting was a relative success. The first half of the day was filled with networking and skill-sharing events. Then the afternoon session contained discussions on the structure for the network (it's voting procedures, etc) and proposals for a plan for 2008.

Over 40 participants from 23 organisations came, which was a great turnout. We even managed to get the network meeting publicised in the local media, and a camera crew from TV 25 showed up to take some footage and do some interviews. We made the evening news! Whilst the event was fun, now the real work starts - I've got to get down and think about how DEMO (an NGO, and the current host of the network) and I can implement the suggestions that were made during the meeting.

Having said that, my mind is currently on other things. I've just finished the first day of a four day training event that Amnesty International Mongolia and I are running for two regional schools. Today was the turn of Erdenet Secondary, and on Wednesday we'll be heading off to Darkhan (one of my favourite places in Mongolia - see http://rob-in-mongolia.blogspot.com/2007/09/ive-properly-starting-to-settle-in-ive.html). So far it's be good fun (the participants are 14/15 years old, so full of energy!). As someone who was quite active with Amnesty international back in the UK, it's a real privilege to be able to help out the organisation in Mongolia. Anyway, I'll update you all about how the training went in the next weblog entry... Lots of love from an internet cafe in a very snowy Erdenet,

Robert

# Welcome to the House of Fun #

On Friday our house was transformed for a day into a house of fear, trepidation and toilet paper hanging from the ceiling. Yes, that’s right – we had a Hallowe'en Party! Jon, Jude and I invited our colleagues and friends along to our house party. Little did we know that almost everyone accepted our invitations… 40 Mongolians turned up. This made for a pretty good party! The Mongolians had never experienced a Hallowe'en party before (having only heard about them through American films/sitcoms). They were all pretty intrigued. They also loved the idea of having a house party. As many Mongolians still live in gers (tent houses), or live with their families, house parties are pretty tricky to organise. We all had a good time, and the house is still in one piece!

Preparing for Network Meeting – The work I’ve been doing for the last few weeks is close to its fruition. This coming Friday the 9th of November I’ll be helping to host an important meeting for the National Volunteer Network. The meeting will allow the 21 different member organisations to get to know each other better and share their skills. It will also contain two discussions. We’ll be looking at how to change the procedures of the network (the voting process, the amount of time one organisation can host the network, whether there is a need for a presidential figure), and will be planning the network’s 2008 strategy. We’ve encouraged some of the local press to come to cover the event, so if many turn up we’ll be raising the profile of volunteerism in Mongolia. I’ve managed to get the English language press to turn up too (The Mongol Messenger and the UB Post). Any articles they write may prove useful for future fundraising proposals. The attached photo has little to do with the meeting, besides from the fact that it's a view from the conference centre where the meeting will take place. Enjoy!

The COLD – yep, it’s starting to get pretty cold here in Ulaanbaatar. Last week’s average was -7C, and I’ve been told it’s just the start. By January the average will be -25C, and will sometimes hit -35C! The result of this cold is that many of Ulaanbaatar’s street children end up sleeping in the sewers. The children go to sleep next to the heating pipes that run underground. Whilst I’ve read about this problem, it was pretty shocking to see this first-hand, and actually see young people climb in and out of the manholes in the streets. I feel very lucky to have my warm room to return to everyday.

That’s me signing off for another week. Warm wishes from a cold Mongolia,

Robert