Famine funds are making a real impact for children and families – helping to feed and care for hungry kids across the globe. This year, you can designate your Famine funds to several different countries around the world. We’ll highlight some of these places in our upcoming Country Profile posts. You’ll get a brief, but interesting look at each country, learn about it’s unique culture, and see how World Vision has been making a difference for the hungry children and families who live there.
Mongolia is located between China and Russia and is just slightly smaller than Alaska.
Mongolia:
Population: 3,133,318
Religion: Buddhist 50%, Shamanist and Christian 6%, Muslim 4%, none 40%
Area: 1,564,116 sq km
Terrain: Vast semidesert and desert plains, grassy steppe, mountains in west and southwest; Gobi Desert in south-central
Language: Khalkha Mongol 90%, Turkic, Russian
The main Mongolian livelihood is livestock, especially in countryside, but the harsh climate is challenging for survival of their animals. ©2010 World Vision
Culture:
Mongolia is located between China and Russia and is just slightly smaller than Alaska. It is made up of nomadic tribes, meaning most of the people don’t have a permanent home and move around depending on the season.
Popular Sports: Horse racing, archery, and wrestling
Language: Khalkha Mongol
Games: Chess and checkers
Food: Meat and dairy make up the bulk of the Mongolian diet and common dishes include meat filled dumplings [buuz], and mutton soup with noodles, [guriltai shul].
Best known for: Mongolians are known for their love of singing and dancing. The horse fiddle, called the morin khuur, is a traditional bowed stringed instrument that is used in most of their music.
World Vision has created opportunities for students like these to take part in musical instruction. ©2007 World Vision
World Vision’s Work:
World Vision began working in Mongolia in 1991, providing much-needed medical supplies to help clinics and hospitals that were facing a shortage of drugs and medicines. Two years later, World Vision began emergency relief work following severe snowstorms, helping provide basic necessities to more than 21,000 people. Today, World Vision operates 32 development projects, and sponsors nearly 80,000 children in Mongolia.
In recent years, blizzards have laid blankets of snow across the region, preventing livestock from grazing. The loss of livestock, a crucial food source in Mongolia, has contributed to the country’s sever food shortages.
Horse racing is a popular sport in Mongolia. ©2010 World Vision
Fun Facts:
- The Great Wall of China was built to keep nomads (many from Mongolia) from stealing China’s crops.
- Most Mongolian families live in Yurts, which are circular, wooden frames, with a felt cover.
- Sheep anklebones are used in many Mongolian games as dice or tokens.
- Mongolia is the second largest landlocked country in the world but it is the least densely populated.
Most families live in yurts, like this one. ©2009 World Vision
Now that you know more about Mongolia, you can designate your Famine funds to Mongolia this year and make a lasting impact by providing much needed food and nutrition to children and families.
Reply
I’d feel better about giving to World Vision in Mongolia if I didn’t see how the money is actually spent. Walking around a city where it doesn’t make any sense to own a private vehicle, I’m regularly passed by the World Vision employees in their big new SUVs. My friends from World Vision live in big townhouses in nice neighborhoods and send their kids to expensive private schools, while I live in an old Russian apartment and homeschool my children. How much of peoples’ contributions actually reaches those in need?
Reply
Thank you for inquiring about World Vision. 85% of the money World Vision brings in goes to those in need.
That money is used for relief and rehabilitation, community development, child sponsorship, education and more. World Vision has an easily accessible and transparent annual report regarding all financial information which can be found here. If you ever have any questions about the reliability of a charity or organization, a great source to use is charitynavigator.com. This tool gives you a quick but thorough overview of World Vision.
I can not speak for how World Vision employees in Mongolia spend their personal money but you can know the reliability of World Vision by checking out those links above. SUVs are commonly used in areas and communities where World Vision works because of their durability. This past August I was in Burundi with World Vision. We rode in SUVs everywhere because without them we would not have had accessibility to the remote communities where World Vision is working. The roads in Burundi are often not paved and can be dangerous. Even in the SUVs we were still bumped around all over the place! Granted I haven’t been to Mongolia, but having been in Burundi I can testify to the fact that World Vision is doing great development work and truly helping the people that need it most. We saw a health care center, a clean water project and a school lunch program to name a few. It was really cool for me to see the work that World Vision is doing in the field is effective and truly helping people. If you have any more questions, feel free to email mtvedt@worldvision.org.
Thank you!