GlobalGiving.org: Start 10 New School Libraries in Rural Mongolia

World Radios in Classrooms!

Jonathan Renich — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 01:10:17 GMT

New radios in classroom

We're excited to announce that we have partnered with Ears to Our World (earstoourworld.org) to help provide portable world radios into classrooms and libraries we are working with. These radios help introduce a new form of learning and exploring for students.

The radios are not only able to capture local radio signals but also international broadcasts from all over the world. It has been great seeing students searching through the static to find distant programs and identify which languages are being spoken and discuss what they are hearing. It's perfect for English classes which are now required at all grade levels. English materials are few and far between and being able to find English broadcasts and discuss what is being hear is a new and exciting exercise for students.

We are working with two local schools to run a pilot project and learn how this project can be implemented best for students and teachers. We plan to continue working with Ears to Our World to include radios with new library projects we launch in the future.

It's very exciting for us to continue building on our library projects in rural areas. The students are so eager to learn and the more variety we can introduce into their learning environment the more they get excited to discover more. Class attendance and grades are positively effected and teachers are able to give better quality lessons.

Thank you for being part of this story with us and Ears to Our World!

Students working with new radios

Teacher and students working with new radios

Summer 2011 Update

Jonathan Renich — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:47:23 GMT

Big plans for this fall!

We've hit the summer slow season. Schools are out of session, most teachers and directors are on vacation in the countryside and no one can think of anything except horse racing and wrestling with the annual Naadam Festival just around the corner. Not a lot of activity takes place during this time, but it's the best time to plan and strategize for the upcoming school season.

This year we are extremely excited at the potential reach our projects will have. Your support has been incredible, donations are up, more people are actively involved in helping our projects, we even have a team of adventurers crossing the Gobi desert with camels to raise awareness and funds for our library projects.

We've started short-listing locations for our next libraries (hopefully 6-8 of them!) and are concentrating mostly on small rural towns in the northern regions of central Mongolia. We are working with a few Peace Corps volunteers who are working in these towns and are getting some great insight into the needs of the schools and their students through their daily work there. We also are planning on partnering with another organization who is building "Book Gers" in poor areas of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital to bring education material to the poorest outlying areas of the city.

In short, this fall is going to be a very exciting time and we cannot wait to share with you the results.

Thank you for your ongoing support and interest in what we are accomplishing here in Mongolia.

Links:

Future English Book Drive Initiative

Jonathan Renich — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:16:33 GMT

Spring is coming and we are very excited to start a new year helping schools in rural Mongolia.

An exciting new development is that we have a new cargo shipping partner based out of California that will help us ship books at a very low rate. Since the beginning, people have wanted to donate books and materials directly too us, but it was never possible due to the expense of shipping all the way to Mongolia. But now with the increasing demand for good children's books in English and the possibility of sending shipments by the pallet we hope to finally begin gathering some of the books we enjoyed so much as children and help children in Mongolia experience the same joy.

We'll post news as it comes in, but we would hope that this summer we could begin gathering books and preparing a shipment that will be used in several of our upcoming new library projects this year. It would also be important for us to revisit the numerous projects we have founded in the past which did not receive any English books and add to their existing library to improve upon it.

It's an exciting time and we thank you for your continued support for what we are doing. It's great to work together.

Many thanks from us, and we wish you the best this new year.

End of 2010 Report on Library Projects

Jonathan Renich — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 13:10:37 GMT

Young readers

Happy holidays everyone!

We're happy to announce that we have finished up projects for the year. Made it just before the holiday break! Working with the six schools/libraries we mentioned in our last update we were able to get all of the books we had left to their libraries and into the hands of eager young readers.

We are very excited to share with you the good news that these projects reached over 10,500 students, 195 teachers from six different schools / libraries. We also provided 18 teachers with new laptop computers through our Laptops for Teachers program.

It was a joy to work with these schools this year and we cannot wait to share with you next year about the new projects we have in store. Thank you for your support and contributions to our work.

May you all have great holidays and a happy new year!

Enjoying new books

Studying hard

Young readers

Having fun

Links:

Book sorting!

Jonathan Renich — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 23:47:14 GMT

Sorting books...

Sorting and packing a mountain of books that recently came in. These books will be distributed to six different schools but the majority are going to two 1-5th grade primary schools in the city of Erdenet in north central Mongolia. We ran into some issues with the book publishers mixing orders, substituting out of stock books with new books and not informing us, etc... which slightly delayed the delivery process. However, the receiving school librarians have been extremely helpful adding the new books to our book database and helping them get quickly to the children.

Within the next few weeks we will post more information and photos from these two primary schools and the children who received the books.

Thank you for your continued support! It is making a big difference in the lives of children in Mongolia.

June Update on School Libraries

Jonathan Renich — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 23:02:38 GMT

Librarians of the Gobi Altai Central Library

Summer has arrived and school is out and that means things slow down considerably here in Mongolia. However we are still pressing on with our project to start 10 new school libraries to help children here receive a better education. We just received a new shipment of books from Ulaanbaatar and are sorting and organizing them for delivery to six schools around Mongolia. Five of these schools are in north central Mongolia and one is in a southwest region of the Gobi Desert. All of them are incredibly eager to receive their new books and have been very motivated about preparing their library rooms, shelves, and classrooms to be able to receive their new materials.

Once these deliveries are completed we will continue to review new school library applications and provide materials to the rural schools and libraries that need them the most. We have already received requests from other schools in our northern region as well as a few from the extreme west of Mongolia. We look forward to building relationships with these communities, discovering their needs, and working together with them to help their children receive a quality education that will benefit their communities for generations to come.