NGO helping underprivileged children living near Ulaan Chuluut landfill receives donation
Just 10 kilometers from the city center in Songinokhairkhan District lies a landfill called Ulaan Chuluut, where hundreds of families have to resort to scavenging the massive piles of waste as a means of survival. Most of the children in these families are underfed, abused, and unable to attend school due to being forced to help their parents to look for anything that can be sold for money.
Without proper food, shelter, and education, many of these children have no hope or opportunity to escape from a fate of barely surviving. These children have slipped through the cracks and are left to fend for themselves as alcoholism and abuse run rampant among these families. Where government intervention is absent, the only hope for these children are people who have the goodwill to voluntarily help create a better life for these children.
One of the handful of organizations that actively help these underprivileged children is the Relations Development Center NGO. Established informally in 2006, the NGO was first established as a safe area to feed and educate the children of families that scavenge the Ulaan Chuluut landfill. The NGO was registered officially in 2014 and has been expanding its help to children with the help of donations from organizations and businesses.
Currently, the NGO operates a designated area to prepare the children for schools and integrate them into society. Since its inception, a handful of organizations have donated to the NGO.
In an effort to support the prolonged goodwill of the NGO, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Deputy Managing Director Mitsuhiro Furusawa and his wife visited the informal school and shelter that the NGO operates near the landfill. Through the IMF Giving Together program, Mr. Furusawa oversaw the donation of school uniforms, the construction of a gazebo, and bunk beds for the shelter.
With the donation of the bunk beds, the NGO will be officially allowed to operate as a safe shelter for the children who previously would have been left without supervision in their family ger or forced to work alongside their parents to scavenge the landfill sites.
Many of the children belong to families who have lost their livelihood due to extreme winter conditions or dzud. People living in Tolgoit settle close to Ulaanbaatar in search of jobs but unemployment remains high. Ulaan Chuluut is the largest landfill in the capital and collects general and bio hazard waste from around the city.