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VSO - Sharing Skills, Changing LivesWhere we do it > Mongolia - Maija Elina Paasiaro, Fundraiser and Capacity Builder, UlaanbaatarName: Maija Elina PaasiaroLocation: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia Position: Fundraiser and Capacity Builder for 2 Mongolian NGOs VSO Youth for Development volunteer Maija Paasiaro has exchanged life as a researcher and writer for a publishing company in London for a role working with two Mongolian organisations looking to eliminate child labour and support women farmers. By her own admission Maija had a comfortable graduate job, but it wasn’t making the most of her skills –she wanted to build on her experience working in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia and gain some more practical experience of working in development before starting a MSc at the School of Oriental and African Studies. “I was actually surfing the net, looking for jobs in development when I came across the Youth for Development (YfD) website on the VSO pages. Reading about what YfD did and from my knowledge of VSO, I thought it would be a great opportunity to really test myself.” Maija is working part time at two organisations, helping them operate more efficiently and supporting them in their fundraising efforts. One is the Mongolian Women Farmers’ Association, which is based in one of Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts (an area around the city where many people have settled their traditional felt round-houses in recent years). The organisation’s main activity is training poor people to grow vegetables on the land surrounding their ger. This training is needed because Mongolians are traditionally a nomadic people and so there is no culture of growing crops. The other organisation is a small children’s rights NGO called the Equal Step Centre. The NGO’s main aim is to help eliminate child labour in Mongolia. She says: “There are thousands of children working in Ulaanbaatar and Equal Step Centre tries to give these children alternatives to working, for example by providing non-formal education and vocational training for the children and also skills training for their parents.” Both NGOs are in competition for funding with a vast number of similar organisations in Mongolia. In the face of this competition, were two challenges: “Most donors demand that project proposals and reports all be written in English, but neither organisation can afford to employ anyone with good enough written English. The real shame is that the funding is going elsewhere when it could be being spent on some truly brilliant projects the Farmers’ Association and the Equal Step Centre have developed.” Maija works with the NGOs in a variety of ways: teaching English and computer skills; helping to plan and write funding proposals and reports; corresponding with donors and foreign contacts; creating promotional materials for both organisations; encouraging management best practice; and networking with other local organisations to pick up better ways of working. Bangladesh Cambodia Cameroon China Eritrea Ethiopia Gambia Ghana Guyana India Indonesia Kenya Malawi Maldives Mongolia Mozambique Namibia Nepal Nigeria Pakistan Papua New Guinea Philippines Rwanda Sierra Leone South Africa Sri Lanka Tajkistan Tanzania Thailand/Burma Uganda Vanuatu Vietnam Zambia Zimbabwe © VSO unless otherwise stated | Privacy statement | UK registered charity number: 313757
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