Thoughts From Mongolia V

On Sunday I spent the afternoon with my translator’s brother seeing some of the
cultural activities of the city. We started off visiting the Gandan Khid, the biggest Buddhist monastery in the country. This place is a series of temples, schools, and walkways. Then we walked to Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Mongolian History. Both of these places were well displayed and I was very impressed with how this country has a value for its history and culture.

I got lulled into looking out the window of my apartment and seeing how people were dressed to determine how cold it was. I was really surprised to find how very cold (at least for me) it was outside on Sunday and we did a lot of walking around the downtown area, through many large squares where they have had rallies and demonstrations over the years. People seem to enjoy the cold weather and get upset when they talk about the hot summer days in the city.

This is my second week in Mongolia and I am trying to carefully plan out appointments that could potentially lead to more long-term support for the emerging NGO community. I have four training sessions planned with different organizations and coalitions including the human rights, democratization and environmental/rural community development groups.

I met today with the president of the National Mongolian University to explore a partnership with Regis University in Denver (where I have been teaching graduate classes for 18 years). There is a critical need to provide training and capacity building services to professionalize the NGO sector and develop the skill levels of the leadership of these organizations. The president invited three of his faculty members to watch me train tomorrow for the democratization organizations and then I will be meeting with his staff afterwords to determine next steps.

I had an interesting dinner last night with a high level government official who works with the Ministry of Environment. He received his master’s from the University of Oregon and he is involved with policy issues around minerals and the environment. The really interesting part of our dinner meeting was when he talked about being raised in the Western part of the country in a ger—and his parents still are living in a ger.

Approximately 40-50 percent of the population still lives in gers, especially in the countryside. This lifestyle has not changed much in thousands of years, but he mentioned some improvements in the nomadic lifestyle. Some of the gers now have solar panels to collect the heat and some families, rather than moving four times of year by camels, now have trucks. The food is still very basic and it consists of mostly meat and very little vegetables, but occasionally they will have potatoes, cabbage and rice. During the Russian days (prior to 1990) the kids left home during the wintertime and went to schools in the closest city where they lived in dormitories and went home during breaks. This is the reason for the 90+ percent literacy rate of the country. During the past years that has broken down a bit with the market economy and the government has not provided the same schooling and housing for the kids of ger families.

Work is going surprising and exceptionally well. Yesterday I had my largest training session at the Soros Foundation, the largest philanthropic entity in the country with a mission to foster an open and democratic society in Mongolia. George Soros formed these foundations in each of the ex-soviet countries after the Berlin wall went down in the early 1990s.

I had 45 people at a three-hour training session yesterday at the Soros Foundation. These NGOs were working on a variety of social justice, human rights, and environmental issues. There were a number of people from the disability community—one of the issues I have been involved with for 30 years. People are hungry to learn how to develop capacity and strengthen their NGOs, and they asked many questions. We spent a lot of time talking about how to develop a philanthropic sector in a part of the world that has no history of voluntarism or philanthropy. Even though the session was three hours, half of the time was spent in translating the information back and forth from English to Mongolian.

I also had an excellent meeting with the President of Mongolian Trade Unions that has a membership of 230,000 and represents the workers of the country. He is a young and handsome leader who is charismatic, extremely articulate, and was educated in England. A lot of his local unions and affiliates around Mongolia need to be strengthened and we talked about assisting this movement in capacity building. The union movement reached its peak in the late ‘80s with over 400,000 workers. With the market economy the union movement in Mongolia has lost membership, but with the growth of mining and other companies, it may be gaining some strength. The role of unions in these old Soviet countries historically has been extremely strong and this organization has real influence in the government.

I am coming down to the last two work days. I have a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador and his staff concerning the role of Mongolian NGOs and how the U.S. government views them. I am surprised and pleased by how open and accessible people are to meet with me. Part of this could be the small size of the population and the ease of access to people with power and influence. Part of it is that people are hungry for technical assistance and support to strengthen the NGO sector that is so new and fragile. There are very few resources—financial and technical—from people who have expertise and experience in growing and developing these organizations. The other part that pleases me a lot is that Mongolia is really struggling with how to become a democracy and is relatively open to having a strong NGO sector. That is not true in many developing countries where the sector is viewed as a threat and the governments shut down efforts to strengthen it.