Overview

The Equal Step Centre (ESC) was established 5 years ago by Battuya who has vast experience of working with children. ESC was registered with the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs as a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) in 2002. The central feature of ESCs work is to assist and support vulnerable children who are mainly aged between 8 and 17 years old. These children are seen as vulnerable for various reasons including: 

• Coming from families that are very poor.
• Being victims of physical or sexual abuse.
• The children can sometimes be homeless which is especially dangerous in the winter months when the temperature can go as low as -35 degrees Celsius. A group of boys were homeless, living in the sewage systems for warmth and washing cars during the day for money. Fortunately ESC was able to purchase a ger with some funding so that the boys had somewhere much safer to live than in the underground tunnels.
• Many of the children are involved in child labour activities, some of which can be very dangerous for example some children are working in saw mills with dangerous wood cutting machinery.

There are a number of methods and projects that ESC works on to address the needs of vulnerable children across Ulaanbaatar. For example, one project called the Family Support Centre trains mothers and young women in haberdashery. The groups are taught how to make products such as bags and cushion covers. The aim of this project is to try and provide poor families with a more secure and regular source of income. Consequently, there should be less financial pressure on the children to work and then they may get the opportunity of going to school. ESC works with numerous stakeholders in the community such as business owners, parents, police, teachers and social workers to try and bring about change regarding child labour and to educate people about child rights.

In 2004 ESC joined a network of organisations called ECPAT who work towards the elimination of child prostitution and trafficking. Then, in 2006 ESC became a committed member of International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN).

Battuya (the director of ESC) acknowledges the importance of providing vulnerable children with necessities such as food and clothing but also highlights the significance of providing these children with opportunities to have fun. It is crucial to provide children who experience hardship with a chance to laugh and be children! Many of the children that ESC works with experience a lot of hardship and ESC try to provide activities such as dance classes so they can have moments of joy. Having the opportunity to laugh and play with their friends in a safe environment is substantially beneficial for the children’s mental wellbeing.     

Equal Step Centre mission statement:

To protect the rights of vulnerable children and to support these children in their development as equal and harmonious citizens.

Formal and Informal education

Through a project primarily supported by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) the ESC has been encouraging children that are working in various markets across the city to start attending informal or formal education again. This work has been mainly carried out by social workers and teachers that ESC employs. As well as providing an opportunity for education ESC has been providing training about children’s rights to interested parties such as market place managers, leases holders, market workers and police. Both of these methods have been implemented and received successfully. 

The different markets across UB provide different services for example there are food, electronic and timber marketplaces. Therefore, the jobs that the children do at these markets vary from place to place. The most common task that children do is carrying heavy objects. On a visit to one of the centres I met three boys who were in their late teens but were quite short for their age. It was suggested to me that one of the main reasons for this was that they had been carrying very heavy products in the markets since they were little. I was also told “they might be small but they a very strong”. In one market ESC has even been able to get officials to designate it as a “no child labour zones.” Many vulnerable children have attended vocational training courses supported by ESC and have gained skills such as cooking, hairdressing and building trades. One barrier I have come across so far that deters the children from attending formal education is that they are picked on by other children because their clothes and appearance make them stand out as being from a poor background.

Summer Camp, 2007

This year ESC formed a partnership with a U.K. based charity called Edinburgh Global Partnership (EGP) and held a summer camp in the Mongolian countryside for the vulnerable children that ESC works with. The summer camp gave many children a break from their day to day lives and a chance to relax, play games and enjoy themselves. The activities that the children really enjoyed were singing and dance classes. As well as these activities the children were also taught about trafficking, sexual abuse, child prostitution and other risks that vulnerable children like child labourers are affected by. Despite the children needing an opportunity to get away some of the children had to return to UB early because their parents were ill or their families needed them to work and couldn’t afford for them to be away.

Battuya stated recently that she has noticed that children have many more psychological problems than she had previously observed. ESC believes this maybe largely due to an increasing rate of child abuse and constant threat of factors such as illness or trafficking. We hope to hold the summer camp again in 2008 and believe it would be beneficial to have a councillor or someone with similar sorts of skills there to help the children to deal with and resolve some of the issues affecting their lives and their mental wellbeing.

Case studies of some of the children that attended the summer camp:

• Two young girls that were experiencing domestic violence came to the camp and afterwards ESC social workers arranged for the girls to go to a centre that supports the victims of domestic abuse.
• There were three boys that attended that had been very ill (one of the boys had been hospitalised). The summer camp gave these boys a much needed opportunity to recover and rest. In Mongolia people need a specific document to receive treatment at the hospitals and because many of the children are homeless or from poor backgrounds these documents have never been received or have been lost. Consequently, the children aren’t able to receive any medical treatment. Unfortunately at the moment a skin infection seems to be becoming rife among the child labourers. ESC social workers are attempting to get the children their documents and set up regular visits to the hospital so that they can get check ups and treatment if needed.
• Four of the children that attended were homeless; living and working on the streets of UB. At the camp one young boy was unable to sleep at night because he had never slept anywhere that had windows before. Once Battuya knew this she arranged for the women training at the Family Support Centre to make some curtains. These were then put up and the boy was able to sleep better at night. 

An American charity called the Asia Foundation provided each child that attended the camp with a torch and a bag that had anti human trafficking information on them and these gifts were really well received by the children who had never had gifts like these before.

There should be six files entitled ‘photos for Anne’ within the ‘photos for fundraising’ folder. These six files are all related to the summer camp.

I’m going to try and post some pictures showing how the camp was constructed from scratch with the help of volunteers. There will also be a picture of a boy with a plaster on his chin. This photo reminded me of a story Battuya told me about the camp. Apparently, VSO provided two big first aid kits for the camp just in case anything happened because it is a fairly remote area. At some point during camp one child hurt themselves accidentally and a volunteer cleaned them up and put a plaster on the cut. The children had never been cared for in such a way or seen anything like the products inside a first aid box and were mesmerised. Suddenly all the kids started going up to the volunteers saying “my knee hurts” and “I have a pain here on my head”! Just so they could be shown some care, affection and also get something new! Even if that new thing was just a plaster!

I saw some really cute looking children and I will try to post some photos of them but when I do you’ll notice how a lot of them have had their hair shaved. Just recently the Mongolian police have begun shaving the heads of prostitutes and of all the street children that they pick up. This has led to these groups of people being labelled in society and potentially stuck in a self fulfilling prophecy and a vicious cycle difficult for the street children to work their way out of.

Socialisation Centre

I think that the nearest thing that we have in the U.K. to a Mongolian socialisation centre is a youth club or a drop in centre. The centre is located in the basement of a block of flats behind the famous Mongolian wrestling palace. The centres main attractions are the table tennis, karaoke machine and dance lessons. The main aspiration of ESC at the moment is to provide the Socialisation Centre with a shower and air conditioning. 

Around the walls of the Socialisation Centre are pieces of artwork and competitions that the children have engaged in. One project that was very successful was a photography project partly funded by VSO. A group of children were each given disposable cameras and asked to take pictures that would illustrate what their lives are like. 

Battuya told me that the children appreciated having the disposable cameras so much that they were convinced that they could tinker with the cameras and make them work again after all the photos had been taken. I think this illustrates their ingenuity and how grateful they were for the cameras. 

I recently met someone in Mongolia who wants to fund this same project again and get enough photographic stories together to compile a book. I’m hoping this new photo project will begin again early next year. 

Photography project  

My life through my eyes

The Equal Step Centre NGO works at 6 markets around Ulaanbaatar: Khuchitshongor, Zaiz, Da Khuree, Khangai, Bars, and Kharkhorin. The Equal Step Centre runs non-formal education centres for children aged between 8 and 17 who have either dropped out of school or never attended school. Instead of going to school, these children work as porters, cleaners, guards and small traders etc in markets for very little pay. The aim for each child is to either return to formal education or to attend a vocational training course and find a better, skilled job. 

We received a grant from VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) to implement a photography project with the children. 15 children were chosen to participate and were given basic training by children who had previously attended a photography course run by Save the Children. The children were then given disposable cameras and asked to take pictures of their work places, lives and things that mattered to them. 

After the photos were developed, each child presented their photos to the group and explained what they were and why they had taken them. The children’s own descriptions of their pictures are given on the exhibition boards displayed at the socialisation centre.

 I have put together some of the photos that were created as part of this project.

1. There should be a photo of a young girl and a boy in a market. The girls name is Otgoo and through this photo she told a very sad story about how the boy was her best friend but soon after the photo was taken he had died in a fire at his home.
2. There is a photo of a group of girls sorting through meat. This meat I’m told wouldn’t get sold to people so the girls sort through it so it can be used for dog food. It’s is really smelly work.
3. The boy in the orange top is called Chiga.
4. The young boy doing karate was enrolled on a cooking vocational course with the support of ESC. He came to the camp and worked as assistant chef so that he could get some work experience and now is employed in the catering industry.
5. Other photos taken show the conditions the children are living in and the types of tasks they have to do in order to get by.