The Charity we are rasing money for - Mercy Corps - Mongolia

 We have finally got our home page off the ground and are contacting all those perople who have promised to sponsor us to date !

 We have chosen to raise money for the Mercy Corps projects in Mongolia.Mercy Corps supports rural Mongolian communities and herding families with economic, agricultural and civil society programs.

Mercy Corps has a really strong team of local staff working in Mongolia. Mercy Corps has been working here for over a decade now and over those years the organisation has not only built a strong reputation for the quality of its work, but has also grown internally. Many of the projects we run today are only possible because of the depth of experience, talent and enthusiasm that we have within our team and I find working in that environment very rewarding.

Life in rural Mongolia is hard, particularly because of the harsh environment. Summer is generally a very pleasant time to visit the country, but in winter temperatures plunge to well below -30 C for months on end. The climate is also very dry, with low rainfall, making many forms of agriculture risky.

Mongolia is a huge country with shaky infrastructure that makes communications difficult. There are few good roads and, though the network is spreading, many places still lack 24-hour electricity. Travel times are long and many social services are only available in large cities, reducing people's access to them.

Mercy Corps uses money raised by the Mongol Rally to fund projects and activities being run by local charities and voluntary groups across the country. Every year we invite these groups to send us their ideas and proposals; we then work with them to make sure they have the necessary skills and tools they need to manage the funds in an accountable way and to organise their activities effectively.

These small projects not only enable local groups to pursue the initiatives that they believe are most relevant to their communities, but they also help to generate stronger local communities and to reduce the sense of isolation that many rural groups feel.

The above has been taken from their website which can be found at http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/mongolia/15607