July 19, 2024 News

Riding the wave of change with young leaders in Mongolia

Over four years, we empowered future leaders in Mongolia through volunteering platforms, encouraging voter participation, and improving employment skills. Our initiative reduced youth unemployment and strengthened civil society organisations, fostering youth engagement and sustainable development in Mongolia.

Empowering Mongolia’s Youth: A Movement for Change

For 4 years, we had the privilege of working with future leaders and change-makers to nurture new solutions to generational challenges. Together, we developed unique volunteering platforms, boosted a historic young voter turnout, and touched thousands of young people’s lives with new employment skills. Most importantly, we created this together with a driven community that turned a project into a powerful movement.

Challenges Faced by Mongolia's Youth

Young people between the ages of 15 and 34 make up around 30% of Mongolia's 3.4 million population. Despite this, they must overcome significant challenges to develop themselves through quality education and extracurricular activities and do not have a voice in decisions affecting them . Consequently, education and employment policies often do not develop with youth in mind. This often results in difficulties securing good jobs.

Empowering Youth through Strategic Initiatives

To tackle these issues, the ‘All for YOUth, YOUth for All’ project enhanced civil society organisations' (CSOs) capacities to contribute to Mongolia's governance and development process through capacity building, networking, advocacy, and research. Our change focused on four key areas:

1. Sharing NGO Capacities: We helped NGOs empower the Mongolian youth to better integrate them into society.
2. Youth employment and entrepreneurship: We strengthened NGO capacities to boost youth participation in the local economy.
3. Youth engagement and participation: We empowered NGOs to increase the civic engagement of the youth through partnerships with local authorities.
4. Promoting youth volunteerism: We highlighted the significance of volunteerism in society.

From January 2020 to December 2023, Caritas Czech Republic in Mongolia worked on the European Union-funded ‘All for YOUth, YOUth for All’ project with the Center for Citizenship Education NGO and the Mongolian Youth Council NGO. Together, we collaborated across 5 different areas: Ulaanbaatar city and Khentii, Dornogovi, Bayankhongor, and Selenge provinces to work with youth to create a future where they can thrive.

Innovative Solutions and Significant Milestones

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns and restrictions shortly after its start in 2020, we quickly responded and successfully adapted with innovative digital tools and platforms. We met our objectives, leaving a lasting impact

Our initiative significantly reduced youth unemployment, with the rate dropping to its lowest in ten years. By the third quarter of 2023, the unemployment rate reached 5.2%, and 23.3% of all unemployed citizens were young people aged 20-34, compared to 45.9% four years earlier.

Our highlights include:

• Strengthening the capacities of more than 600 representatives from 200 NGOs from the CSO networks in organisational skills, including strategy, volunteer management, and financial management.
• Supporting 24 local youth initiatives with technical and financial resources.
• Jointly organising 4 Annual Forums of youth civil society organisations with the Government of Mongolia.
• Supporting 33 local initiatives with financial assistance;
• Helping launch the first workplace accommodation website for people with disabilities, tokhiruulga.mn.
• Empowering more than 500 civil society and government over 500 representatives with tools for civic engagement and decision-making processes.
• Sharing international and local successful practices and examples of civic participation in a variety of ways (Yvote mobile application, study tours to Europe, local exchange programmes, fact sheets, media campaigns, and policy dialogues). “By participating in knowledge-sharing and networking meetings, I made new contacts and learned how other local CSOs are effectively working with government agencies,” said a participant from Dornogobi Province during the knowledge and practice exchange visit.
• We also developed the first platform to bridge volunteers and volunteer-seeking organisations, ivolunteer.mn
• The multifaceted activities of the ‘I volunteer, do you?’ event, volunteer management guidelines and training, policy recommendations, and the www.ivolunteer.mn website benefitted 30 NGOs, 215 volunteers directly, and over 3000 volunteers indirectly. "Many people view a volunteer as someone who lends a hand without compensation. I've made mistakes because I didn't understand how to deal with volunteers. So, I went over the volunteer guidebook that the project had produced. I acquired a lot of important information that I hadn't previously considered." says the Head of an NGO in Ulaanbaatar.

Future Directions: Continuing the Legacy of Youth Empowerment

The project was thoughtfully designed to enable the inclusion of marginalised communities, including people with disabilities and the LGBTQI+ community. At the end of the project, 60-70% of the participants were women, and thanks to these efforts, more than 50 people with disabilities participated in the project activities.

With an experienced team and a human rights-centered approach supporting multilateral cooperation, we championed youth engagement and inclusion in policy documents at the soum, province, and national approval levels. "The youth project's initiative resulted in approving a youth programme (2024-2027) in our province for the first time in 2023. The provincial governor has approved the necessary budget to implement the program in the 2024 budget." says the Head of Citizens' representative Khural in Selenge province.

As a team that walks our talk, we included youth, volunteers, and mentees in many ways, sharing and exchanging our knowledge with our community. One notable example was our long-term volunteer from the Australian Volunteers Program, who shared 2 years of service with our team and even volunteered for 6 months during COVID-19 from Melbourne. He shared youth engagement expertise from the local government in Australia with dozens of local administrators across Mongolia.

Our project received support from various international co-funders included The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, The Australian Volunteers Program, The Asia Foundation, The Canada Fund, People in Need, and The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. “We thank the Caritas Czech Republic in Mongolia for the excellent preparation and organisation of such a vital study tour. We would also like to thank the donors, other officials, and CSOs we met for their kind reception and hospitality,” says a happy participant of the International Study Tour.

While this chapter of our journey with the youth of Mongolia has finished, we are finding new ways to involve youth in our Sustainable Plastic Recycling in Mongolia project. We are developing new projects that put youth at the centre of a sustainable future.

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