What's the issue?
Unbelievably, over 4,000 children and young adults live on the streets of Mongolia 's capital, Ulaanbaatar. Because night temperatures regularly dip to
-30 °C, these children shelter underground. They have made their home amongst the sewer and hot water pipes under the city's streets, sharing their space with the rats - and living a life that we in the West can barely imagine.
How has the situation arisen?
After the collapse of communism in Mongolia in the 1990s, coupled with a farming disaster in the rural areas, many thousands of people flocked to the towns and cities for work. The welfare system simply could not cope and some people were left to fend for themselves.
Read a background article from the Independent, December 2003.
"I put my hands firmly on the edge of the manhole and lowered myself down. I was heavily wrapped up against the icy cold and holding the sides of the ladder tightly I descended. The air felt dank but it gradually became warmer and then extremely hot. The ladder ended and I realised that I was in a vast tunnel, lit be a few flickering candles dotted here and there. By my foot there was a sweet wrapper, the first tell-tale signs that there were children around. There was a sodden Sainsbury's carrier bag of all things and a collection of sticks, ashes and some reddish fur, the remains of a fox that had been eaten." "Along the sides of the tunnel I could make out massive pipes that seemed to bulge into strange shapes and these shapes began to move. They were children, lying one above the other on the pipes, as if they were in bunk beds. We spoke to some girls (aged about 11 or 12), who had been living on the streets and sleeping down here in the sewers for several years. They were very hardened and they acted as pimps for younger children, sending them into the park to pick up men. I looked at the girls as they talked to our translator and tried to imagine what they would have been like if they had been permitted to have a childhood."
Extract from Christina Noble's book Mama Tina, first published in 1991.
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Who is Christina Noble?
Christina Noble was born in Ireland and, following a harrowing and difficult upbringing in the slums of Dublin, she grew up driven to help homeless and abused children all over the world. Christina first set up a home for street children in Vietnam and then went on to help the thousands of homeless children in Mongolia by creating the Give a Ger fund.
What is a ger?
Christina discovered that the traditional Mongolian home (in rural areas) was an insulated tent called a Ger. Christina's charity, CNCF, went about trying to buy second-hand Gers, complete with furniture, so displaced families living on the street and children with no family could have somewhere safe and warm to live. She created a ger village on the outskirts of the city, complete with a school and medical facilities. For those children who were not willing or able, for various reasons, to leave their street existence, she provides a nightly roaming medical clinic and helps to provide warm clothing and food to the street children. Although CNCF isn't the only charity operating in Mongolia , it does provide direct help to these children. A furnished Ger costs around £345.
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| The outside of a ger... |
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| ...and the bright & cosy interior. |
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| One of Christina's ger 'families'. |
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