Wow. You can't see anything from up here, it's perfect.
This is going to make it much easier.
I'm Julie Veloo, and I'm here today to talk to you about a moment in my life
that profoundly changed my life.
I had an opportunity to truly see a group of people that were largely undiscovered
More or less living in the shadows here in Ulaanbaatar.
And seeing them led me to a decision which changed not only my life
but theirs and the lives of many others.
I talk about the people who make a living scavenging up at the garbage dump.
I first came up to them three years ago when I moved to Mongolia.
When I came here, I was expecting to do volunteer work
with the foundation that I'm the vice president of.
I was expecting to do 'regular' volunteer work
which meant, more or less, just bringing clothes to people,
working with the existing organizations,
and finding children who needed help and helping them.
I wasn't really expecting what came next.
When I first met the people up at the dump,
I was sort of confused.
I thought: "Who are these people and why are they working up at the dump?"
These are people who strap their babies to their backs and take them up there.
When they get too big to be strapped to their backs, they get left home alone,
or they get left home with a 6 or 7 year old sibling,
who surprisingly, doesn't do a very good job of taking care
of their infant and toddler sisters and brothers.
So, I was confused. Like, why don't they have a real job?
Well, it turns out that most of the people
who are working at the dump used to be herders.
A few years ago, when we had a really bad winter
and over 9 million animals died,
they were forced to give up their lifestyle out in the countryside,
their beautiful, beautiful, traditional Mongolian lifestyle,
that's so much in touch with the land and so much in touch with nature
as they follow the pastures with their herds.
Traditional Mongolian lifestyle requires people to be competent and capable.
It requires that they are really self-reliant individuals,
and the only problem of course is, without animals, you can't live that lifestyle.
So, when they were forced to move to the city because they had no animals left,
they found themselves with an amazing set of skills
none of which actually applied to their current life in the city.
So, they were forced onto the garbage dump
to try and find food, or fuel, or clothes,
anything that they need for their lives.
An average day up at the garbage dump will net you about 10,000 tugriks.
That means everybody in the family has to work in order to make the ends meet,
that means, Moms, Dads Grandmas, Grandpas, children.
And that's sort of where this story starts.
I want to tell you about the day that coalesced into this decision,
that has resulted in the creation of the Children of the Peak Sanctuary.
It started when I went with my local NGO partner, Baaska
- who himself was a dump child and grew up eating garbage himself,
so he's very familiar with the people in the community -
up with a load of clothes and blankets and what not to give out,
and I met some amazing people.
The first person that I met is Sarnai. Sarnai is an amazing lady.
She is illiterate. She dropped out of school in first grade.
I'm not sure you can actually drop out of school in first grade,
but that's what happened to her.
Her mother died, and so she had to stay home and take care of her siblings.
She knows quite a lot then about children taking care of children.
Few years ago she was up at the dump scavenging,
and she had her then youngest of four children strapped to her back
- a little four month-old baby boy -
and she came across something in the garbage that is not all that uncommon.
She came across a little, discarded baby girl, two days old.
She did what everybody would do,
she picked the baby up and took her home started raising her as her own.
That's what everybody would do, right? Maybe not.
Maybe people would give it to an orphanage or some other place,
but she's an amazing woman, obviously not from an upper socioeconomic level,
But her heart and generosity is so great
that she took the child home and was raising her as her own.
Now, just as an aside, in the last 4 years,
there's been 17 such children found at the garbage dump.
Now, think about that last slide that we saw
that had all those big machines and stuff going.
Of those 17 children, most of them are now living in state-run orphanages.
Some of them actually have, like Sarnai, some generous people from the dump
have taken the children home and are raising them as their own.
But when I met her
- obviously this was wonderful that this girl was saved -
but I was profoundly upset and just enraged about the complete injustice
that there are women about there, young women presumably,
who feel they have no option
except for them to discard their baby in the garbage dump.
And of course, upset about the injustice for the babies who being discarded there.
And I was moved on a level that I don't often get moved on;
just the profound wrongness of it on every level
was something that resonated.
And when I left her house, I was really upset about the situation
that the children, and the families,
and the women up there were finding themselves in.
So then we took some more clothes, and we went to the next house.
I use the term 'house' very loosely. It was really a shack.
Eight people live here. there was only one person at home when we got there.
It was a little boy. He was 9 years old. And he was homesick.
The rest of his family was up at the dump scavenging for garbage,
but he was too sick to go.
He was too sick to go to the dump,
he was home alone with no TV, no Nintendo,
no Mom, no juice, no medicine, no snugly blankets,
no fire, more importantly, and it was minus 25 that day.
You can't help but be appalled
by the injustice that his choice for the day being sick
was to stay home and huddle under a filthy blanket
or go up to the dump; tough choice.
We took him over, you know, to a neighbor's house,
so that we could get warmed up and get some soup.
As I was leaving from there I just was overwhelmed by the difficult choices
that all those people up there in this community were making,
particularly given the wonderful self-reliant nature of these people.
Just because of the circumstances of now being in this position,
they are forced to make these kinds of decision
which people shouldn't have to make.
Then, we went to a Ger and I imagine most of you are familiar with gers.
You know, the circular wooden structures,
two layers of felt in the winter, a bit of plastic, some canvas. Yes?
They're wonderful wonderful portable dwellings
for the traditional Mongolian nomad.
And in the middle they have a stove,
which when the fire is lit and it's minus 25 outside,
these are beautiful, cozy, warm, lovely, lovely dwellings.
But when it's minus 25 outside and there is no fire and no fuel,
it's not that cozy.
When we walked into this Ger, and I saw these 2 little children there,
this is the culmination, this is the moment,
that really led to everything else that came afterwards.
You walk into a Ger, and you see a little 6-year-old boy with his baby sister.
She was just two. She was half dressed. She had a t-shirt on and nothing else.
She was covered in burns from having previously fallen against the fire,
and he was dirty and playing with little broken bits of toys,
that he had scavenged from the dump himself
- because he works at the dump, or he did work at the dump
when someone else was watching his baby sister.
I was of course shocked and horrified and all of those things that one is,
but the thing that really got to me was that he looked at us
with this complete stricken look on his face and he said:
"Oh, I'm so sorry," - (Mongolian) Uuchlaarai, uuchlaarai -
- (Mongolian) Suutei tsai baikhgui - "I have no tea."
And I was appalled really that we had put this poor boy
who was already taking on the role of father, and mother, and caregiver,
and everything, and we had put him in the position of feeling bad
because culturally, as you probably all know, most of you,
if you enter a Mongolian household, the very first thing that will happen
is they will always offer you something to drink and something to eat.
And he had neither, and he felt horrible.
And that's the moment at which, more or less...
- I can't say I made a decision because I didn't really,
the decision arrived fully formed -
that these children, these families, this community
required someplace safe and warm for the children.
They needed to be able to have some security
so that they could move forward
and claim their own lives reclaim their own lives really.
So that was when the decision to create
the Children of the Peak Sanctuary was conceived.
Giving birth to it was quite a bit more difficult.
In the immortal words of Martin Luther King:
"Sometimes you have to do something just because it is right."
And that's why we did this. Because it was right.
And I'm not telling you this
just because of this particular circumstance.
It's really important to understand that everybody, all of you,
if you haven't had one already, you will,
you will have one of these moments in your life, maybe more,
where right and wrong are just there, right in front of you.
And you are going to be forced to decide,
be forced to make a decision which way you're going to go.
And I want to tell you that if you choose to do the right thing
the rest of the world will line up behind you and go along.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you.
My moment was spurred by a similar pivotal moment for Sarnai.
I can only imagine when she was at the dump,
and she saw the little girl in the red
- she's the one that was found discarded at the dump,
and this is her slightly older brother, this giggling monster there -
she at that moment made the decision, she brought the child home.
And my decision to move forward with the sanctuary built on her decision.
But really, when you're making those decisions, and it's so scary,
you feel like: "I can't do this because I don't know what I'm doing,"
I want to tell you, I had really no business making this decision;
I was going to build this sanctuary. It was going to magically happen.
I knew nothing about construction and nothing about kindergartens,
I knew nothing about Mongolian law, or land practice, or anything.
But that didn't matter, I was moving forward.
So we started looking around and deciding how to do this.
we found a local fellow who runs an NGO
that rehabilitates homeless alcoholics and teaches them construction skills.
so we went with him to design and build these fiberglass gers.
They look like gers, They're not really gers
because they don't have a stove in the middle.
They have in-floor electric heating which is pretty cool up at the dump.
It's actually pretty warm, but it's pretty cool, I think.
So the children, when they come, they have warm floors to play on.
But it wasn't all sunshine and roses. We had our share of problems.
The building that was on the site looked fine, it looked great.
The ceiling was really low. When I walked in it, it was about there.
There was a light bulb hanging down that I thought was going to kill me.
So I said, "Let's just raise the ceiling."
When we raised the ceiling we discovered the insulation was entirely cardboard
so that quick renovation turned into a major rebuild, as it does.
The point is it was expensive, and it was difficult, and it delayed the project,
but it didn't matter because all of that is just stuff.
When the decision is made, the goal is you're going that way and you just go,
all the rest of the stuff in the middle is just stuff you have to get through.
And we got through it.
And I'm very happy to say that we have a center now.
(Applause) Yeah!
Every day, Monday through Friday, we have 40 children from the dump
up at our kindergarten safe, warm, fed, educated, learning social skills
getting into mischief, pulling each other's hair.
I'm not going into all the details, but basically,
we have these children taken care of
which enables their older siblings to go to school,
and their parents to start looking at moving forward.
This didn't happen all by itself.
As I said earlier when you make a decision the rest of the world lines up behind it,
and I am touched, amazed, and honored by all of the generosity that just came out.
I made the decision to do this, and that seemed to create opportunities
for other people looking at that to make their own decision about it.
And I can't tell you
- well, I can actually, I'll tell you all of the things that happened -
I've had people phone me up and say:
"Julie, we really, really want to do a fundraiser for you. Is that OK?"
No. No, don't do that.
Don't raise money for my foundation. That would be bad.
Of course you can. Thank you so much.
We've had people from Australia, from Canada, from America,
there's Slovenia, England, Dubai, South Africa.
No South Americans, I must say, But pretty much everywhere else.
We've had donations from people, We've had corporations step up and say:
"I think you're doing a great thing. We want to give you some money."
We were called by government and said: "We think you should apply for our grant."
OK, well, I'll do that.
It was 30-pages of paperwork, it was quite difficult,
but hey, they gave us money which allowed us to buy
a whole bunch of really gorgeous things for the kids.
As a matter of fact, so many people have helped us:
we've had local people volunteer; one of my friends stepped up and said:
"Hey Julie, I'm not doing anything.
How about I spend 20 hours a week helping you?"
OK, you can do that. That would be great.
I had people from Canada make a really beautiful piece of jewelry
that was auctioned to raise funds.
The point is so many people have helped on so many levels.
The most touching one for me really was --
There was a group of Australians having a multifamily garage sale.
When the children from the families found out what was going on
they of their own volition apparently went to their bedrooms
got their favorite toys, brought them out, gave them to their parents and said:
"Sell theses and give the money to those children in Mongolia."
I'm not sure the parents were happy about this
because usually, the favorite toys are the expensive ones.
(Applause)
For me the touching part of that of course is that my decision,
what we're doing here reached all the way across the world
and showed children that they can make a difference,
that their decisions to help someone somewhere else are real and valid,
and that they have that possibility.
So, like I said, tidal wave of support behind us
has allowed us to bring our 5-year term goals forward,
and so, we're looking in the next year to do a whole bunch of initiatives,
one of which is to do vocational training for the parents to try to get them
a way to use their skills to get them off of the dump.
We want to do after school programs for the older kids that are behind
because they've been at home taking care of their siblings.
We have a vocational program for the women to come and volunteer at our center,
and if they have aptitude and interest we'll help them go and get certifications
so that they can get a job at another kindergarten,
open their own daycare, do all manner of things.
We're starting a washing business for one of the local ladies
so that the children, whose clothes are too dirty to go to school,
will be able to have clean clothes
so when they go to school, nobody will laugh at them and say:
"Oh, look, there's the dump kid."
The most important and certainly the most expensive one that's coming up
we're building a hot water shower facility for the community.
I love Mongolia first of all, I have to say this.
The local Khoroo director gave us the road in front of our center:
"Take it. Just have the road." How does that happen?
People don't give you a road, but he gave us a road and said:
"If you're building a hot water facility you can have this road."
We're just going to put a fence up and build it. We'll see how that goes.
Our local community, right at the moment,
if they want to have a hot shower, they have to walk about 40 minutes.
When they arrive there, are often turned away because they're too dirty to shower.
Which does create something of a Catch22 situation:
if you're too dirty to get clean.
If they're going to get clean at home, they have to go to the well,
buy the water, carry it home, heat it up.
If you're a person who makes your living at the dump,
by the time you buy the water and carry it home,
you're boiling it or your drinking it, you are not cleaning with it.
Recently, we were really, really honored and very fortunate
to be visited by the wife of the Governor General of Canada.
We wanted to give her something special from the children
so we gave each of the children a piece of Ger felt, and they made felt gers,
- I love saying that: "They made felt gers with Ger felt." -
and we gave them lots of things to decorate with,
and we said: "Make this Ger look like your Ger."
How do you see your Ger? What does it look like?
And I was so touched and honored when I saw that they thought
that their gers were happy, glittering, beautiful places.
When we put it all together on the board to make it look like our community,
that's what it came up looking like.
It does kind of look like our community. We've got the hills and the sky.
The hope that I have is that the work that we're doing up there
will make the reality of the community match the children's representation,
that it will be a happy, healthy, glittering, beautiful place to live.
Just in case you're curious, the children that brought me to this point,
the little 9-year old boy that was in the little shack,
his family has moved away, and we don't know where they've gone.
I hope they've gone someplace safe and warm.
But this happens in the community, people they just sort of...
One day they're there, the next day their Ger is gone.
The little girl and boy, the one who was found at the dump and her brother,
are at our center getting ready to go to first grade next year.
They're learning. They know their numbers their colors, most of their letters.
She's kind of a bossy, little thing, actually,
she organizes all the children into tea parties.
I think she may well be your president someday.
Munkhchimeg, our little girl
who was shivering, and half naked, and covered in burns by the fire,
- that's her giving the gift to the Governor General's wife -
when I go up there and I see her running, laughing, being happy,
and just being a kid,
it makes the rightness of what I've done apparent to me.
That's really all that matters. All the rest of it is just stuff.
I had to go back a long way for this quote, way back to Pythagoras.
He's been dead a long time,
but it doesn't change the fact that choices are the hinges of destiny.
I really hope that people realize
that your choices will change your destiny
and potentially, the destiny of other people.
I know that my choice to build a sanctuary has certainly changed my destiny,
And I really hope
that the door that it opened for these children,
opened a whole new future for them.
And I hope that they are able
to skip through that door, and grab that future with both hands,
and live the life that they so richly deserve;
them, and their families, and the whole community.
Thank you.
(Applause)