June 27, 2008
Gregory Cowen on Accessibilty Work in Mongolia
VSO Mongolia volunteers and staff extricated ourselves from work for a couple of days to go to a green valley in the Mongolian countryside to take stock of what we have achieved, in our annual volunteer conference.
Gathering over thirty volunteers from Africa, The Philippines, The Netherlands, Canada, Australia and Britain, with placements as far afield as Bayan Ulgii, Choibalsan and Darkhan, everyone seemed pleased to get together. On the second day I assisted Nickson Kakiri in leading a session on mainstreaming disability in all of our work here, and we discussed and (re)discovered issues of disabilities, rights, exclusion and working with various challenges. We reflected on some positive work done in the last year, including work on universally accessible buildings, and a recent accessibility audit of the Equal Step Camp, our conference venue, in this remote village apparently known only by its train siding, 'Point 290'.
The camp had recently installed a ramp and accessible toilet, and its generous volunteers, on our arrival, had also erected a ger and made us some great meals, a horhog, and a bonfire. VSO's scarce funds seemed in this case to have been directed towards a very promising locally owned and highly sustainable enterprise.
Most of the conference sessions were held in a wooden hall, which worked well with improvised flipcharts and the occasional powerpoint presentation. As Secure Livelihoods Programme volunteer coordinator, I led a session - on a grassy riverbank - which included an update of all livelihoods volunteers' work, where we later returned at dusk to wade in the river, like the local horses.