A small kindergarten at the gates of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.
This kindergarten was designed to accommodate around 25 to 30 children aged 2 to 6, primarily from single mothers.
We want to offer these children the opportunity to stay in a safe environment with at least one warm meal a day, especially during winter when outdoor temperatures drop below -40 degrees.
It is common for children from poor families to try to warm themselves underground by heating and ventilation pipes, as there are no public shelters available for such cases.
The few existing kindergartens are overcrowded. In this part of the city, about 90% of the population lives in yurts, the traditional nomadic tents.
The construction of our kindergarten tested us to the limit, but we never once thought of giving up: months of planning, the bankruptcy and sudden disappearance of the construction company midway through the project, the sudden illness and hospitalization of our key contact there, political elections that called all permits into question, the search for and discovery of a new construction company and a suitable engineer, and so on.
But on the positive side, new help and friendships emerged, thanks to a Mongolian woman named Tzende, who, along with her sister Bolomaa, took up the cause and helped solve the problems with friends and family. A Mongolian artist and friend of theirs then decided to decorate the outer walls of the kindergarten with animals from the movie Madagascar.
We are happy to provide these children with what we hope will be a joyful time in our building, as the name of our association promises: “Happy Bambini.”
Would you like to help cover the ongoing costs of this kindergarten? With about 20 euros per month, you can already support a child and their meals. A big thank you to everyone who gives this some thought.
You can follow the project in the photo gallery.
