Meet Haliuna. She is an 11 year old student from one of the slums of Ulaanbaatar. Through the Asian Outreach-run Literacy Project, Haliuna has finally been given a chance to have an education, giving her and her family hope for a better future.
When Haliuna was six, her mother ran away from home, leaving her three children in the care of an abusive alcoholic husband. Her father died not long after from liver disease. Haliuna and her two brothers were sent to live with her grandmother in the slums on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar. The grandmother forced Haliuna and her little brother to busk in the marketplace, and would beat them if they did not make enough money. This was too much for Haliuna, so at age eight, she and her little brother ran away from their grandmother. They lived on the streets and in the sewers and man holes underneath the city, collecting food from rubbish dumps and sleeping near hot water pipes to keep warm in the middle of the icy Mongolian winter.
One day, about a year after running away, a man who Haliuna knew from the underground took her and her brother to Sunday school at a church. From that day on, her life drastically changed. Kind people took the children and placed them with a surrogate family in a recovery community called David’s Cave. They took her brother to school, and because Haliuna was illiterate, having never attended school, her new family enrolled her in the Asian Outreach Mongolia (AOM) Literacy Project.
She has now been attending the Literacy Project
for two years and her educational progress has been very rapid. From being completely illiterate, Haliuna has risen to the top of her class. As a result, she is able to integrate into the government school this year as a 3rd grade student, on the understanding that if her rapid progress continues, she can join her own age group next year. She has made many new friends in her class and also at David’s Cave.
Haliuna is a talented little singer and dreams of being a famous artist when she is older. She is a big fan of Mongolian pop star Serchma. Her dream is now much closer to becoming a reality, compared to the hopelessness of her life in the underground. Haliuna is very blessed to have been picked up from the sewers of Ulaanbaatar. There are many Mongolian street kids who do not survive the poverty, extreme conditions and violent lifestyle, let alone have the chance of an education and to follow their dreams.
Haliuna’s case is not unique. There are tens of thousands of Mongolian children that drop-out of school, or are unable to ever go to school, mostly due to poverty and illness. These children will stay in the poverty cycle into adulthood unless they have the chance to change their future through education. By partnering with us, you have the opportunity to give a child a 2nd Chance at life.
