What We Do

Youth and Education

ADRA Mongolia acknowledges that education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty.

ADRA Mongolia provides educational opportunities for children and adults through literacy and numeracy training and life skills training.ADRA Mongolia aims to strengthen vocational and higher education institutions through support mechanism such as curriculum development activities.

Key Youth and Education activities include -

Life skills training, gender based violence awareness and anti-bulling programs, vocational training, adult and children’s literacy training, building capacity of Non-Formal Education centres, and disability inclusion and awareness raising.

Program highlight – Children’s Centre

In 2010 ADRA Mongolia’s Youth and Education Program continued its efforts to support educational access and opportunities for girls and boys of Mongolia. The program focused its attention on areas of vocational skills course, life and health skills, literacy and inclusive education for most marginalized children and adults in Mongolia, ensuring access of children with cognitive disabilities to education and health care services in rural areas . Besides these ongoing program areas we also work to provide education and health services for children with disabilities through Community Based Rehabilitation Centre for Disabled Children (CBRC) located in ger area of Chingeltei District.

Ensuring Access to Education and Health for Children with disabilities in Rural Mongolia project

Most significant event of the program in 2010 is the commencement of the European Union funded three year project “Ensuring Access to Education and Health for Children with Cognitive Disabilities in Rural Mongolia” with ADRA UK. This project aims to improve access of Children with Cognitive Disabilities to education, health and social welfare services through development of early diagnosis tools, education assessment tools, improvement of referral system, building capacities of service providers and public awareness activities in Bayankhongor, Zavkhan and Ulaanbaatar. The project will address three priority areas contained in the Biwako Millennium Framework (ratified by Mongolia in 2002): early intervention; public awareness on education and health rights of disabled; and strengthening of self help organizations of people with disabilities. The project works closely with Association of Parents with Disabled Children, Down Syndrome Association, local special and mainstream schools and Ministries of Health, Education and Social Welfare.

Community Based Rehabilitation Centre for Disabled Children (CBRC in Chingeltei)

ADRA Mongolia affirms its long term commitment in improving lives of disabled children by continuing the CBRC activities for disabled children and their parents. Since November, 2009 the CBRC has started two-year project funded by Slovakia Aid through ADRA Slovakia. This project aims to improve quality of community based services for disabled children and their families through capacity building of physical infrastructure and training of human resources at the CBRC and raising awareness among policy makers and general public. During the 2010, the CBRC centre has been re-constructed and started its activities with enhanced physical capacity. During the 2010, the CBRC centre has served more than 100 families with disabled children in the area through trainings, information dissemination, referral services, physical and occupational therapy.

Family Education

The Family Education Project has entered its last year of five year period. During the past four years the project activities had been implemented in more than 19 soums of Zavkhan aimag. The project aims to empower school drop out children and their families through literacy and vocational trainings. The activities include basic literacy for adults and school drop out children, vocational skills and life skills training, alongside health education and small business management training. A two-staged competition complement activities by encouraging beneficiaries to develop sound business plans for which the best business plan will receive tools to support their business idea to support their small businesses. From this year, advanced small business trainings for families from previous years have been added into the project activities. As part of the project’s exit strategy, the project is giving priority to building local capacities of Non Formal Education Centres in Zavkhan aimag through Training of NFE trainers and provision of training equipment and resource materials.

During 2010, the project trained 100 adults in different vocational skills and literacy and trained 80 children in English language literacy in Urgamal, Durvuljin, Zavkhanmandal and Erdene-Khairkhan soums of Zavkhan aimag. As a result of the project activities, many small business groups are running their businesses such as providing baking supply, supplies to schools’ lunch programs and kindergartens. The project activities are funded by ADRA Canada.

Youth Enterprise Project-4

Youth Enterprise Program-4 (YEP-4) is an integrated program which aims at poverty reduction and economic empowerment of youth resulting in sustainable development. A two-month vocational skills course is combined with small business management training, as well as life and health skills helps to promote young people’s self sufficiency and personal growth.

During 2010, a total of 450 unemployed youth acquired diverse vocational skills in Ulaanbaatar, Zavkhan and Bayankhongor aimags. During this period the project collaborated with local Non Formal Education Centers and Vocational and Technical Colleges in target areas to provide most demanding vocational skills in labor market such as construction, plumbing work, farming, electric appliances repair, sell phone repair and welding among many others. Diversification of vocational skills has improved job opportunities for these trained youth which has been confirmed by the fact more than 60% of the youth are now being employed and another 10% are continuing their education in vocational colleges to upgrade their skills. During this period the project has also continued its effort to include disabled youth in vocational training program and increase awareness rising among decision makers of education institution on employment opportunities for disabled youth. More than 45 disabled youth have participated in different vocational skills course. The project is being funded by ADRA Australia and ADRA Switzerland.