January 6, 2023
News
The first weeks of the new year are a great time to look back and review what we have accomplished in the last year. The past year was fruitful and productive for Caritas Czech Republic in Mongolia. We focused on supporting youth-led civil society organisations while protecting the environment through actions to support proper waste management. Here are the best moments of 2022 that should not be forgotten:
We launched a new project to support small medium entrepreneurs and retailers in the agri-food and beverage sector
Due to the food and beverage sector’s heavy environmental impact, adopting resource-efficient practices from Farm to Fork Strategy, in line with the European Union’s Green Deal, is key to success in Mongolia’s quest to transition to a low-carbon circular economy and accelerate poverty reduction. Therefore, we launched a new project titled “Switching On the Green Economy” in 2022.
The “Switching on the Green Economy” project aims to support the agri-food and beverage small medium entrepreneurs and retailers in Mongolia in adopting circular economy practice through a market-based eco labeling system, capacity building, behavior change and access to green finance.
The project is funded by the European Union and its SWITCH-Asia programme, and we are working on it together with the INGO People in Need, the Mongolian Sustainable Finance Association, and the Development Solutions NGO.
Caritas Czech Republic in Mongolia was awarded the “Best organisation of the Year” for supporting volunteerism
The benefits of volunteering can be enormous for society, the community as well as individuals. This is especially true for young people as it helps them to contribute to their community, learn new skills and even gain work experience. However, finding the right match, cause or organisation to volunteer for has been quite challenging for Mongolian youth as there was a lack of information on where to find volunteering opportunities.
Fortunately, we have created the iVolunteer platform, which has become a bridge to connect volunteers and employers. Moreover, we have developed the volunteering management guidelines for civil society organisations and organised the “I volunteer, Do you?” event to support volunteerism. We have involved 180 young people under the “All for YOUth, YOUth for All” project funded by the European Union and the Australian Volunteers Program.
For these accomplishments, Caritas Czech Republic in Mongolia was awarded the “Best organisation of the Year” given by the Volunteer Center of Mongolia.
Our “Do not just throw away” media campaign on waste reduction and segregation reached a total of 2 million people with overlapping numbers
Mongolia is one of the top 10 countries that produces the most plastic waste per capita. But the 18 plastic recycling plants in Ulaanbaatar that have an annual recycling capacity of approximately 18.500 tonnes of plastic recycled only 10000 tonnes of plastic, 52.4% of their capacity in 2021 due to a lack of raw materials. People are unaware of what can and cannot be recycled due to a lack of plastic recycling awareness among the general public.
Thus, the “Sustainable Plastic Recycling in Mongolia” project team organised the “Do not just throw away” media campaign to increase public awareness on the negative effects of waste and to encourage Mongolians to segregate waste properly at their homes.
As part of the media campaign, 10 awareness-raising short videos and several posters were published and they became viral on social media channels. Also, the team organized awareness-raising in-person events and involved 30,000 people. Click here to watch one of the viral videos for the campaign.
We support young entrepreneurs through a crowdfunding event to raise a kick-start funding for them
Youth represents a third of the total Mongolian population, however 55 percent of all unemployed people are between the ages of 15 to 34. Unfortunately, the youth unemployment rate increased by 3.4% compared to the previous year. Therefore, our “All for YOUth, YOUth for All” project team organised a crowdfunding campaign to support social entrepreneurs that will promote youth employment and overall community livelihood and development.
The crowdfunding activity started from making visually striking videos about the six social enterprises to grow public attention and funding. All the videos were articulated to explain who the social enterprises are, the story of their products/ideas, why they need support, what reward they will offer to funders, and how much funding they need in order to achieve their goal. The videos were published on the social media channels of Caritas Czech Republic and Chuffed.org for international audiences. In total, all six videos were viewed by 1.1 million people in overlapping numbers. Also, an in-person event was organised to raise kick-start funding for the young entrepreneurs.
As a result of the crowdfunding activities, the overall funding raised by the six social enterprises was around 7,000 EUR.
We help entrepreneurs in the plastic waste recycling sector to grow
There are a total 24 factories that recycle plastic waste in Mongolia. In order to support these green businesses, we conducted a market analysis on recycled plastic products and introduced the results of the study to the entrepreneurs, to help them improve their products and increase the variety and use of recycled plastic products on the market.
Furthermore, a capacity-building training was organised for recycling entrepreneurs to increase their soft skills and improve their knowledge of sustainable business strategies. The training consisted of 10 different topics focused to help recycling companies reach their full potential.
Our goal is to do more in 2023 and many years to come
In the year of 2022, Caritas Czech Republic in Mongolia accomplished much more than what is mentioned above. We will continue supporting small medium entrepreneurs in recycling, as well as agri-food sector and civil society organizations in 2023.
