Our Projects

Mongolia is a landlocked country located between China to the south and Russia to the North.  “Asral” means compassion in Mongolian. Asral’s projects are initiated in response to the request and needs of local stakeholders and cover a wide range of social welfare sectors in order to appropriately tackle the great poverty faced by many families and the harsh climatic conditions they live in.

Poverty in Mongolia

With the break up of communism came rapid inflation, output, income and employment fell dramatically creating unemployment, insecurity, and for many of the people, severe poverty. Mongolia is a country precariously sensitive to the weather with temperatures reaching –50°C in the winter and +40°C in the summer. In the last few years Mongolia has suffered unbearable weather conditions that have killed millions of livestock on which the Mongolian herders rely.

As the herders cannot exist without their animals there is a continual migration into Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Consequently a huge shanty town has now developed around Ulaanbaatar. Living conditions are cramped, unhygienic; unemployment and violent crime are rife. Many households are now headed by women, who are the poorest members of the society, and it is a continuous struggle to provide for their families, many of their children ending up on the street and in the orphanages. One third of the people live well below the poverty line, 80% face severe insufficiency in food and other services.

With very harsh winters, poverty and homelessness are life-threatening issues in Mongolia.  Some 44% of the population living in gers – the Mongolian for yurt – are estimated to live on less than US$ 20 per month, with very limited access to safe water, sanitation and basic infrastructure services.  The cost of heating a ger is not insignificant for the poor, as the lowest temperature measured in 2005 reached –50°C. There is a basic necessity for fuel, hot food, and warm cloths in order to survive this extreme temperature. Many of the poorest families are unable to provide these necessities.

Despite a growing affluence for some Mongolians, the power to buy the basic necessities is falling for the poorest families and many eat very poor food only once a day.  Without fuel there is no warmth and food cannot be cooked, children are hungry and go onto the street to beg.

Response to the Poverty

In response to this poverty, Asral NGO was set up to support families and children. The NGO’s main aim is continually to keep families together and children with their parents or relatives in order to keep the children off the streets and ensure they get an education. This is done by training people in skills, finding self-sustaining work for women, supporting children in their education, and direct assistance and outreach in the areas of health, food security, housing & heating, and clothing. Asral’s projects also work towards enabling people to stay in the countryside by creating secure employment opportunities for them and initiating social welfare projects to help compensate for difficulties that arise from isolation. 

In 2001 Panchen Otrul Rinpoche founded Asral NGO for social work. In 2003 a building was built with a large donation from His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the help of many sponsors. Asral NGO’s centre was built on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, next to the shanty area to be a community resource for people of the area. It was built on the edge of the ger district.

Asral Project locations

Asral works in three main areas the ger district, which is a shanty town, of Ulaanbaatar, the capital city; in Gachuurt, 20km from Ulaanbaatar; and in Ondershil in the Gobi desert region. Occasional support is also provided at other localities in Mongolia.