ULANBATAAR, Mongolia - Travelling north from the city center, the Soviet concrete buildings and crumbling sidewalks of downtown Ulaanbataar slowly melt away. In their place are less permanent shelters. Some are traditional Mongolian gers, portable tents marooned because of urbanization. Others are one or two-room houses, usually made of ill-fitting pieces of plywood. These homes are crammed on small lots carved high into the hills. Each dwelling, be it a tent or a makeshift house, has a black pipe poking out of the ceiling. Families here use cheap coal for heating, spewing a thick layer of haze across the entire valley. These are the ger suburbs, where most of the city's booming population lives.
I came here to visit one of Mongolia's only schools for disabled children. The school is in a tiny Soviet concrete house, four square-shaped rooms and a long hallway. School staff have done what they can to soften the hard Russian architectural features. The class room is painted rose, the blue game room has small house plants sitting on each windowsill.
The school director welcomed our party. I came with three people I met at the hostel: Myriam, a German volunteering at an adult facility for the handicapped in Irkutsk, Russia; Jin, a Malay going to a private architecture school in London; a French woman who works six months a year with Save the Children. She served as our guide and translator and arranged this visit.
The director had us sit in the classroom. Another staff member brought Nescafe and hard Mongolian bread. I pretended to sip as she started to tell us about the school.
The school -- offically a Community Based Rehabilitation Centre -- opened in September, a joint venture between three international non-profit organizations and the local Mongolian government. It aims to teach life skills to children with disabilities, both physical and mental. It has no name.
"We are still deciding," the Frenchwoman confessed.
According to the director, children with disabilities suffer widespread discrimination in Mongolia. Cash-strapped schools turn them away, and the government provides few resources. Children can wind up stuck in the ger, having little contact with the outside world. This facility aims to change that, bringing children together to learn how to put on clothes, write and play.
Before opening the school, staff members conducted an extensive survey of needs in the area. They found more than 200 children with disabilities: far exceeding the scope of the school, with has just four full-time staff members. They decided to focus on children with no previous education. Children come two or three times a week for several hours. Transportation is available on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
The director said early results have been promising. Previously mute children can now say a few words. Children have learned to play with others, and are improving their motor skills. The director pulled out a book of the school's work, showing lines of neat ABCs and colorful pictures of gers and stick figures.
The school is a pilot program, and if successful might be copied in other parts of the capital and throughout the country. Excellent service needs to be combined with economy. Otherwise it won't be able to operate in cash-strapped Mongolia.
"We need to show that we can operate without much money," the Frenchwoman said.
As we left the school, a little girl looked up from a massage a physical therapist was giving her in the exercise room. She started moving both her hands wildly, waving goodbye to the foreign visitors. We waved back, and she smiled.
***
Although the school is very thrifty, with staff-made and furniture and toys made from found objects, it still needs support. Donations can be made to the Community Based Rehabilitation Centre in Ulaanbataar, Mongolia through Save the Children's Web site at http://www.savethechildren.mn/face/index_e.php?type=news&news_id=18.
