RESEARCHER B.URANBILEG’S 8-YEAR STUDY TO ‘ENLIGHTENING THE PEOPLE’

After spending eight years meeting over 37,000 people from all walks of life to address issues of unemployment, poverty, death and diseases in Mongolia, researcher B.Uranbileg has found herself upset at the lack of support for her research project from the government and research institutions.

“What I’m most frustrated about is the lack of openness and support from the government and research organizations that should be working together to support researchers who have already begun conducting research in critical areas,” she said.

B.Uranbileg claimed to have ap- pealed to the UN, the Asian Development Bank, the US Embassy, the World Bank, JICA, the World Health Organization, the Global Foundation, and large private businesses like Rio Tinto and Oyu Tolgoi LLC, which operate in Mongolia, for support for her research projects with no success.

“I reached out to everyone. But there is a lack of openness and interconnectedness between organizations, which is a big problem.”

Through her studies, B.Uranbileg hopes to increase public understanding about education and give everyone a broad range of knowledge about educa- tion and health, which she believes will help develop the country. Her studies looked at why there were numerous negative trends in Mongolian society since the 2000s – specifically the rise of unemployment among highly educated young people in the country, increase in crimes involving children, growing number of orphan children, lack of patriotic values among youth, increase in illiterate graduates of general education schools, and health education issues in Mongolia.

The studies concluded that there were major gaps in how the government defines education and how the public views it, and that state policies need to be changed.

“The people think that education is only obtained in universities. This is a wrong notion – it isn’t just academics. True education covers all areas of life – it involves a broad range of knowledge in key areas, such as health and wellbeing,” B.Uranbileg says. “Giving people a broad range of knowledge and understanding, and helping then enlighten is essential for the growth of our nation.”

For B.Uranbileg, the best way to reach everyone in Mongolia, including nomads in secluded parts of the country, and provide them with essential knowledge and education is through television as nearly all the 37,000 people she met across 15,000 kilometers through her research had a television set at home.

The researcher had prepared boxes containing books and study-at-home DVDs, which contains advice, information and interviews from health and social experts, which she hopes to distribute to all soums and school libraries in the country. She noted that the focus group for her DVDs and materials are the youth and parents, but assured that everyone will benefit from them. She has visited hundreds of families in poverty and families with three or more children to donate study-at-home materials.

B.Uranbileg said that, to date, she has been financing her research projects largely through donations, loans and out of her own pocket. She collected around 98 million MNT from donation from Mongolian friends and movements abroad, and raised 30 million MNT from people in Mongolia, including academics, professionals, and even retired elderly people contributed to her studies.

The studies, conducted over a period of eight years, will be coming to a close this year after a visit to all 21 provinces of Mongolia in April. B.Uranbileg said that she is in a desperate need of partners and support for her project in this final stage, and noted that although the government does not support her project, it receives major funding from international organizations to start similar research projects. This, B.Uranbileg says, leaves her no opportunity to work with international organizations as they already agreed to issue funding to government research projects with a similar objective. The researcher added that throughout the course of her study, she has seen five governments but none were able to provide support even after admitting that the research projects are “the government’s job” due to “lack of finance”.

“This project is at a critical stage. Eight years of research is about to halt in its final stage due to lack of support and funding. We need support,” said B.Uranbileg.