This project will support the Lamp of the Path NGO Soup Kitchen to feed 80 homeless people in Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. The project employs locals to provide efficient, culturally sensitive support to overcome hunger with locally purchased food in one of the coldest capitals on earth. Lamp of the Path NGO employs a doctor and a nurse and provides free medical screening and free medicines to the same homeless people who come for the daily lunch.
Ulaanbaatar, the coldest capital in the world, is home to one third of Mongolia's three million people. In Ulaanbaatar, it is estimated that there are somewhere between 1,000 to 4,000 homeless children, and approximately 10,000 homeless people. To survive uninhabitable climates, the homeless sleep underground on the hot water pipes as a way to keep warm during the bitter winters. Lamp of the Path Soup Kitchen provides hot meals, clothing, shoes, bedding and a free medical screening.
The soup kitchen was established in 2003 to provide the most basic necessities for Ulaanbaatar's poor and homeless. Since then it has been serving a hot meal to between 50 and 80 homeless and destitute people, 5 days a week. In addition, it also provides warm clothing, footwear and bedding during the freezing winters when temperatures drop below -30 C. When possible, LOP also provides Gers (the traditional round felt tent) for homeless families and a free health check by the Mongolian doctor.
Lamp of the Path Soup Kitchen provides consistent support to the homeless, giving them the help they need to meet their most basic survival needs and overcome the long-term cycle of poverty that creates homelessness in Ulaanbaatar.
