Contribution from Friends of Humanity for Mongolian homeless and poor people

Lamp of the Path
Dolma Ling Community Centre

Soup Kitchen: 13 000 meals served in 2012

As the name implies the main function of the soup kitchen is provide homeless and poor with a hot nourishing meal. This has now been happening 5 days per week for 8 years with an average of 55 meals per day so providing over 13,000 meals in 2012. 

This leads to us providing for the most needy and desperate, many of whom have a mental disability. As with most societies the most vulnerable include children and solo parents. While the children who attend can no longer be classed as street children since the Mongolian Government has introduced safety nets which have almost eliminated them, many children come from dysfunctional homes and for them the hot meal we provide is often the only meal of the day despite having somewhere to live.

Solo mothers have a very difficult time in Mongolia especially if there is no family support. But even with providing a daily meal it is often not enough to sustain milk production for nursing mothers. These mothers and babies are monitored by our Health Clinic, which is in the same building and when required mothers receive extra rations and often food to take home. Despite this it often happens that for nutritional reasons the mother’s milk will dry up. When this happens the soup kitchen provides supplementary food for the child.

We have managed to reduce costs through stuff reductions, by combining tasks and by changing the way we purchase our supplies. For example this winter we were able to purchase a small van load of the internal organs of animals which we are able to keep frozen due to the extremely low temperatures outdoors. The one load is sufficient to ensure every meal has a high standard of nutrition for the entire winter. However the other side of the inflationary pressure is the need to ensure our staff salaries are realistic. Given the challenges we feel our budget for 2013 is realistic and we are providing our meals at the cost of USD 1:75 per meal including all costs.

The contribution Friends of Humanity made to the soup kitchen in 2012 was essential in the ability to continuing to offer this most basic need to the homeless and poor in Ulaanbaatar. We very much hope we will be able to help them support these needy people in the same way during 2013 and need your help to achieve these goals.

Click  here to make a donation for this project !   CHF50 = Food for 2 months for one person CH300 = Food for 1 year for one person