Start 10 New School Libraries in Rural Mongolia

Dear friends and supporters,

2011 was a good year for Edurelief and our projects. We'd like to take this chance to thank you for helping us make some great things happen for students and teachers in Mongolia. We really could not have done it without you and are so thankful for all your efforts and fundraising on behalf of our projects.

We are extremely excited about what is to come in 2012 and we hope you will continue to being a part of this story who's main characters are you, our supporters and volunteers, and the teachers and students who are working and learning to help promote a better future for this beautiful country.

A few highlights and hopes for 2012:

We spent a lot of 2011 looking at how our library projects and how we can make them more effective this year. The Ministry of Education is in a big transition project for the school system, moving them from an 11-year system to a 12-year internationally recognized system. This has forced us, in a good way, to scale back our funding of textbook purchases for our library projects and look at how we can continue bringing these needed materials to schools along with new materials that will promote learning even more for their students.

We are hoping to do a big push for English related materials this year. Schools are constantly requesting study materials, story books, and other materials that will help boost their students' comprehension. More and more job opportunities are English based and it's something that greatly helps a student's future if they have the opportunity to improve their skills. We will begin providing reading materials that can be quickly distributed to schools and we are also considering our first big book drive to gather children's story books in English that will be shipped by container and distributed to rural schools around the country. 

We are also pursuing some other learning avenues with other partner organizations that include bringing technology into libraries such as World Band radios, laptops for teachers, and other tech that will help boost learning. It's going to be an exciting year to say the least!

We will continue posting our updates here and intend to have much to share!

We will also post details about the book drive project when that is ready to begin because we will need a LOT of help to make that happen!

Many thanks for helping make 2011 a great year for these students, teachers, and their communities. Let's keep moving forward!

Links:

• Edurelief.org

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!

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:

• Gobi Expedition website
• Edurelief