Chapter 7

Sustaining People-to-People Relationships

“If you care about what you do, you can overcome most barriers.”

People-to-people relationships are the lifeblood of any bilateral partnership between countries, the foundation on which all other long-term engagements are built. Long before formal diplomatic relations were established, Americans and Mongolians were meeting together, sometimes in unlikely places. Photographs taken during the Roy Chapman Andrews expeditions to the Gobi during the 1920s attest to some of these early interactions. Even during the long decades of the Cold War, some Americans visited Mongolia as tourists or academics; and a few Mongolians visited the United States, primarily as dependents of Mongolian officials assigned as diplomats to the United Nations.

It was the opening of a formal diplomatic relationship between the United States and Mongolia in January 1987, however, that launched first a trickle and then a flood of interactions between Mongolians and Americans, both private and public. In fall 1989, McKinney Russell, one of the most senior public affairs diplomats in the US Foreign Service—and at that time head of the United States Information Agency office in Beijing—traveled by train to Ulaanbaatar to visit the very rudimentary American embassy then in place. “I did an analysis of the university, the cultural scene, the media,” he later recalled. “It was great fun to be the first officer to go and talk to people to find out what the opportunities there would be for us when it did open up.”

US public diplomacy in Mongolia has since increased exponentially, supplemented by numerous privately funded initiatives. Private relations include a growing number of visits by tourists and business executives as well as a variety of encounters that are academic, cultural, or religious in nature. By 2010, more than 10,000 American tourists were visiting Mongolia annually, while nearly as many Mongolians were taking the opportunity to travel to various parts of the United States.

The year-round American population living in Mongolia is estimated at approximately 1,500 and growing, primarily related to mining and other new business opportunities. Perhaps one-third are believed to be the children of Mongolian parents who were born in the United States and therefore have a claim to US citizenship.

Most Americans living in Mongolia reside in Ulaanbaatar, but some geologists, miners, and others live and work in the South Gobi and other areas of Mongolia rich in minerals. Also, several dozen American missionaries, NGO workers, and entrepreneurs have lived in Mongolia for many years, a few raising families in some of the more remote areas of Mongolia, including in unlikely smaller regional towns such as Choibalson in eastern Mongolia, Tsontsengel in Zavkhan, and Hatgal near Lake Hovsgol.

Private US citizens living and working in Mongolia have been involved in a range of activities in a variety of settings. For example, in recent years American volunteers have helped raise funds to provide new facilities for the Lotus Center, a well-known children’s home located just east of Ulaanbaatar and run by Didi, a Buddhist nun from Australia. Other private US citizens have addressed social issues, taught English, managed hotels, launched bakeries, opened restaurants and coffee shops, addressed environmental concerns, restored historical monuments, promoted wrestling exchanges, and played in Mongolia’s professional basketball league.

American NGOs often facilitate private encounters with Mongolia. These include World Vision, which funds community development programs across Mongolia; Habitat for Humanity, which has built or improved housing for more than 1,500 Mongolian families since 2000; Experiment in International Living, which introduces American high school students to life with Mongolian herder families on the steppe; and the Snow Leopard Trust, which works to conserve and protect snow leopards in western Mongolia.

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The number of Mongolians living, working, or studying in the United States on a long-term basis far exceeds the number of Americans resident in Mongolia. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1987, the US embassy in Ulaanbaatar has issued more than 70,000 visas of all types to Mongolians for business, tourism, study, and migration purposes. At this point, the number of visas issued annually by the embassy now exceeds 10,000 and is growing rapidly.

By now, the number of Mongolians living in the United States almost certainly exceeds 20,000, placing the United States as the second most popular destination for expatriate Mongolian citizens living abroad; only South Korea with a resident Mongolian population of more than 30,000 ranks higher. This figure does not include other ethnic Mongols and their descendants who arrived in the United States prior to 1990, including Kalmyks and Buryats from Russia and other Mongols who trace their origins to Inner Mongolia and now live in the United States. If these additional communities are taken into account, the total number of ethnic Mongolians living in the United States is even larger.

Alicia Campi who heads the Mongolia Society, has noted:

The first Mongolian Khalkha to immigrate to the United States was a well-known lama, the Dilowa Gegen Khutukhtu. He had been a government official and headed a monastery in Mongolia but fled the country during the anti-religious purges of the 1930s, when some lamas left Mongolia for India.

Subsequently, the Dilowa traveled to the United States in 1949 to work with Owen Lattimore in Baltimore. Smaller numbers of other Mongolians also later migrated to the United States by way of Tibet and India.

As with every migrant population, it takes time for a Mongolian community to take root and firmly establish itself. Many Mongolians originally came to the United States as students or tourists, and their average age remains quite young. While migration from Mongolia to the United States increased substantially after 1990, significant numbers are “visa overstays” who have not yet legalized their status and will not necessarily set down long-term roots in America. According to the Mongolian academic Tsendiin Baatar, “a distinctive cultural heritage is being maintained despite Mongolian participation in many of the national institutions of the American host culture.” As economic opportunities in Mongolia increase, more Mongolian citizens working abroad are beginning to return to their homeland to contribute to their country’s development.

The Mongolian-American community includes some Christians, while others affirm and strengthen their ties to Buddhism during their stay abroad. For example, Mongolians play a significant role in the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Center in Bloomington, Indiana, which in turn enjoys a close relationship with both the Dalai Lama and Ulaanbaatar’s Gandan monastery. The large Bloomington complex is situated on 108 acres and includes a monastery and cultural building along with stupas and retreat cottages. Smaller temples with a strong Mongolian influence are located in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, and California.

In a pattern typical of many migrant communities in the United States, Mongolians themselves organize a variety of community structures, not all of them religiously based. The list of such organizations includes the Washington Area Mongolian Community Association and the Mongolian School of the National Capital Area, Inc. Similar efforts are underway in Denver, Oakland, Chicago, and elsewhere.

Over time, these and other institutions almost certainly will add to the depth and breadth of people-to-people relationships among Mongolians and Americans alike. When visiting the Mongolian Community Center in Oakland, California, in October 2010, I was warmly welcomed by Mongolians who were simultaneously establishing one foot in the United States while also remaining linked to their home country. One teenage girl showed me a copy of the contemporary romance novel Coral Bracelet that she had translated from Mongolian into English with encouragement from one of her high school teachers. Other students related their efforts to introduce Mongolia to their American classmates.

During that same visit to the Mongolian Community Center in Oakland, I was told about the annual Naadam festival in the Bay Area, an annual midsummer celebration of Mongolian culture and athletic prowess that attracts several thousand participants each year. In fact, Naadam celebrations have become regular attractions in a number of different states. For example, during the summer of 2012, Naadam festivals were organized in parks and other venues across the United States, including Altadena, California; Arlington, Virginia; Bloomington, Indiana; and Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Tampa.

Almost always, encounters with Mongolians living in the United States provide insights into both the struggles and opportunities faced by a new immigrant community seeking to establish itself. For example, on one visit to Washington, D.C., in late fall 2009, I had the privilege of meeting a Mongolian single mother and her son in Arlington, Virginia. They had been awarded entry to the United States under the annual “visa lottery” program and were already well on their way to becoming US citizens. The son, enrolled in a local high school, had already scored a touchdown for his junior varsity football team and tried out for his school wrestling team, hoping eventually to win a scholarship to wrestle in college.

He would be following a path that other Mongolians studying in the United States on athletic scholarships have pioneered. For example, one member of the Mongolian national soccer team, formerly a member of the soccer club Ulaanbaatar United, finished the 2010–11 season as the leading goal scorer for his college team in Texas, Central Methodist University. Mongolian collegiate wrestlers in the United States have won a number of awards, including one young man studying at the Citadel in South Carolina, who earned a “conference wrestler of the year” award in 2011, and another studying at St. John’s in Minnesota, who was declared “NCAA Division III college wrestler of the year,” also in 2011. Indeed, it is possible to imagine the day when an American citizen of Mongolian origin competes in the Olympics under the American flag, one of any number of “success stories” that reflect America’s truly multiethnic society.

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Perhaps nothing promotes long-term people-to-people ties between countries more than educational exchanges and scholarships. Since USAID sponsored the first four Mongolian students to study in the United States in 1990, the educational component of the US-Mongolian relationship has dramatically expanded. The number of Mongolians studying in the United States increases every year. Many hundreds of Mongolians now find their way to American colleges and universities annually, some using personal resources, others as recipients of private scholarships, and still others under government-sponsored scholarship programs.

Since its inception in 1993, the Fulbright program has been regarded as among the most prestigious of all US government scholarships available to Mongolians. Originated by J. William Fulbright, a prominent U.S. senator with a longstanding interest in foreign affairs, the program is managed by the Public Affairs section of the US embassy in Ulaanbaatar. Focused largely on graduate education by 2012 the Fulbright program had funded scholarships for more than 50 highly qualified Mongolians seeking MA and Ph.D. degrees in the United States.

In early 2011, the Mongolian government made its first direct financial contribution to the Fulbright program, providing an additional $300,000 to expand scholarship opportunities and allow a further ten Mongolians to earn MA degrees in the United States. As a result, 16 Mongolian graduate students had embarked on Fulbright scholarships for study in the United States in fall 2011—up from only three just two years earlier.

These Fulbrighters reflect a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. Fields covered include public health, international relations, biology, urban development, information technology, energy, psychology, law, public policy, education, and supply chain management. So far, the destinations of MA students under the Fulbright program include Brandeis, Georgia State, Harvard, Texas A&M, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Montclair State, Lehigh, Stanford, Syracuse, the State University of New York, the University of California at Berkeley, and the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, among others.

Although the “core” Fulbright program provides scholarships for MA degree candidates, a variety of more specialized Fulbright initiatives support other study opportunities. For example, the International Fulbright Science and Technology Award is highly competitive, involving a worldwide selection process aimed at attracting to leading US institutions the “best and brightest” who are especially interested in math and science.

Another initiative, the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant program, enables recent Mongolian graduates to spend a year in the United States helping to teach Mongolian to American students. Launched only in 2005, nine Mongolians enrolled in the program during its first six years of operation. Participating institutions in the United States so far include Michigan State, Pittsburgh, Indiana, and Western Washington universities.

While Fulbright scholarships largely involve graduate study, some programs specifically focus on undergraduates. In 2009, most notably, 12 such Mongolian students participated in an eight-week intensive English-language program in the United States that introduced them to American culture and society while also strengthening their English language skills. At the same time, other outstanding Mongolian undergraduates have spent either one or two semesters at US colleges and universities, experiencing US higher education firsthand through the Global Undergraduate Program.

The Fulbright program has also been expanded to provide opportunities for American students to study in Mongolia and for American professors to teach and conduct research in Mongolia. Launched in 2002, the program involved approximately 40 Americans during its first decade of operation. The Fulbright Specialist Program, for example, annually sends about five US scholars to study in Mongolia for two to six weeks. The American specialists partner with Mongolian counterparts and conduct workshops, give lectures, assist graduate students, or work with Mongolian scholars on joint research projects. Research funded under this initiative has included everything from anthropology and the arts to law and higher education. During 2012, one Fulbright researcher funded by MTV explored Mongolian music, looking specifically at the ways in which Mongolian musicians have responded to the dramatic changes underway in Mongolia in recent years.

The list of Mongolian Fulbright scholarship alumni continues to expand. Increasingly, returning Fulbrighters make their mark on a variety of Mongolian institutions, both private and public. One Fulbright alumnus heads the math and economics department at the National University of Mongolia; another served as human rights and social policy advisor for President Elbegdorj; and a third became a senior professor at the Mongolian School of Foreign Service.

In the private sector, Fulbrighters who have returned to Mongolia to work have included the chief financial officer for the TenGer Financial Group; the managing director and the head of the marketing department of Goyo Cashmere; the CEO of Max Hotels and Services; the director of the Genghis Movie Theater; and the sales and distribution director for MCS Coca Cola.

According to Fulbright returnee Ariuntsatsral Erdenebileg, who received a master’s degree in Public Health at Georgia State University in 2009, her scholarship opened “a whole new door for my professional development.” One of Mongolia’s few female heart specialists, she works at the Third National Hospital and volunteers for the Children’s Heart Project, a branch of the American NGO Samaritan’s Purse. Under this program, in cooperation with American cardiologists working in hospitals across the United States and Canada, the latest surgical techniques have been used to save several hundred Mongolian children born with heart defects. “If you care about what you do,” she says, “you can overcome most barriers.”

Similarly, Gantuya Badamgarav, a Fulbrighter who studied at Williams College in Massachusetts, reports that she returned to Mongolia with a “deeper understanding about American culture and people,” along with a strong desire to “make changes in our life, community, and country.” She has pursued her objectives through her career in private business, her work in opening an art gallery, and her support for activities that benefit Mongolia’s disabled community.

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The Fulbright program is but one of several ways in which the US embassy works directly to provide study opportunities for Mongolians who wish to study in the United States. By the end of 2011, some 24 Mongolians had participated in the prestigious Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program, named after the late US vice president and senator.

This program concentrates exclusively on early-and mid-career professionals. Mongolians awarded Humphrey fellowships have studied everything from natural resource management at Cornell University to educational administration at Vanderbilt University. Enkhtuya Oidov, one of many outstanding Humphrey alumni, studied at American University in Washington, D.C., and later became CEO for the Nature Conservancy in Mongolia. Subsequently, her son Badruun earned a scholarship to study at Stanford University, returning to Mongolia to head the Zorig Foundation.

Especially during the 1990s and early 2000s, USAID provided funding for Mongolian students to obtain MA degrees in the United States. Since 1996, some 23 Mongolians have received USAID scholarships for study in the United States at the master’s degree level, returning to Mongolia to assume prominent positions both inside and outside government. The list of distinguished USAID scholarship winners is impressive and includes A. Munkhbat, senior vice president at Ivanhoe Mines; B. Enhhuyag, former deputy governor of the Mongol Bank; Z. Enkhbold, senior member of parliament, and Jargalsaikhan, bank executive, television host, and newspaper columnist.

USAID has also funded ten Eisenhower scholarships, the first having been awarded in 2001. The Eisenhower program, named after former US president Dwight Eisenhower, is short term in nature but involves an intensive, tailor-made study tour of the United States that provides access to the most senior levels of government and business.

Here, too, the alumni list is impressive, including among others Ts. Ariunna, executive director of the Arts Council of Mongolia; M. Ichinnorov, director of the Women’s Leadership Foundation; D. Ganbat, director of the Political Education Academy; E. Sodontogos, personal assistant to the president; and S. Oyun, a member of parliament and former foreign minister. Three of the nine female parliamentarians elected to the Great Hural during the June 2012 elections were previous participants in the Eisenhower Fellowship program—S. Oyun, funded by USAID, and Batchimeg Migiddorj and Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, funded from private donations.

Finally, many dozens of Mongolians benefit from their participation in short-term programs such as the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP), which includes the Voluntary Visitors Program. Nominations for this program are managed out of the embassy’s Public Affairs office, and project planning and implementation are managed by the Office of International Visitors in the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Topics cover a range of fields, from journalism to political processes to disability concerns. In every case, the intent is to provide opportunities for young Mongolian professionals to meet American counterparts and visit the United States, often for the first time.

The IVLP ranks among the earliest people-to-people programs launched by the US embassy in Mongolia. Approximately 200 Mongolians visited the United States under the auspices of the program from its establishment in 1989 through 2011. Prominent early visitors included former President N. Enkhbayar, who participated in a program on arts legislation in the United States in 1994, while serving as deputy minister of culture. Three years later, Erdenebulgan returned to Ulaanbaatar after his participation in the Visitor program to stage the Mongolian premiere of the American opera classic Porgy and Bess.

Often, a scholarship or study tour becomes an eye-opening experience, the effects of which continue throughout a lifetime. In some cases, the spouses of Mongolians who study in the United States return to their home country and do remarkable things. One Mongolian woman who accompanied her husband to his graduate study at the University of Wyoming became familiar with the 4-H program, an American initiative aimed at rural youth.

Impressed with the 4-H approach, she started a Mongolian 4-H chapter on her return. Subsequently, in 2011 she became the catalyst for a $222,000 State Department grant to promote an exchange between 4-H Club members in Mongolia and the western United States. As a result, some 34 high school students and their teachers from Wyoming, Oregon, Alaska, and elsewhere were able to visit Mongolia and stay with herder families in the countryside. The experience was repeated again in the summer of 2012, providing another opportunity for American high school students to interact with herder families and experience Mongolia for themselves.

In an effort to maintain contact and further strengthen ties among Mongolians who have studied or visited the United States, an alumni group called “Ambassadors for Development” was founded in 2007 at the initiative of several returned scholarship winners, including Enkh-Amgalan, Khongorzul, Batbold, Altantsetseg, and Ulziijargal. During 2011–12, Ad Hoc interviewer and journalist Jargalsaikhan served as president.

The organization can draw on a pool of approximately 750 returned alumni—a number that increases every year. Support is provided by returned Fulbrighter Uyanga Erdenebold, who serves as “alumni coordinator.” Uyanga attended Louisiana State University and brought Mongolia’s first guide dog back with her to Ulaanbaatar. Her experience in the United States has in turn been helpful in strengthening the embassy’s understanding and information related to Mongolia’s disabled community.

As members of Ambassadors for Development, returned alumni maintain contact with each other while also supporting various public service and outreach programs. Recent examples include two summer camps, both in 2009, organized by returned Fulbrighter Gantuya, which provided English language training to handicapped Mongolian children. According to returned alumnus Bolortungalaga, “One of the common wisdoms we learn and experience in the United States is the value of social diversity and how this understanding leads to equal opportunities for everyone, including people with disabilities.”

In addition to supporting the embassy’s disability initiative, some returned alumni volunteer for Habitat for Humanity projects; others brief new scholarship winners as they prepare to depart Mongolia for their first visit to the United States. In January 2011, the US embassy worked with the alumni association to organize the first full-fledged alumni conference in Mongolia, an event that attracted more than 100 participants.

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Official government-funded contributions can provide useful support, but the fact remains that most Mongolians studying in the United States do so on a private basis. According to the Institute of International Education’s annual Open Doors report, which surveys international study by country, during 2009–10 there were more than 1,250 Mongolian students studying in the United States. Other estimates place the number of Mongolians currently studying in the United States at more than 2,500. Many of these students fund their education out of their own resources, while more than a few receive private scholarships from leading American colleges and universities. Others pioneer entirely new possibilities, such as B. Saruul, who in June 2012 became the first Mongolian student ever to enroll at the prestigious US Military Academy at West Point.

Recognizing the importance of personal initiative and private scholarships in obtaining higher education in the United States, the US embassy along with the Open Society Forum has for many years supported a growing network of Educational Advising and Resource Centers (EARCs), under the EducationUSA umbrella, not only in Ulaanbaatar but also in regional centers such as Darkhan, Dornod, Erdenet, Hovd, and, most recently, Sainshand. Each EARC provides free public access to educational information, including advice on scholarship programs in the United States and around the world. Some of those using EARC services have been offered scholarships to attend Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and other leading American universities.

Other US-funded programs provide a “window on America” in other ways. For example, following President George W. Bush’s visit to Mongolia in November 2005, the embassy launched Mongolia’s first English Access Micro Scholarship Program. Focused on talented but disadvantaged 14-to-18-year-olds, many of whom live in ger districts, the Access program provides after-school instruction and intensive summer activities. While taking English language classes, participants also learn about and gain an appreciation for US culture and values. Some of the most satisfying moments during my own time in Mongolia involved encounters with the Access students and their understandably proud parents, who have sacrificed much simply for their children’s opportunity to learn more.

From the launch of the Access program in 2006 through 2011, some 140 Mongolians living in Ulaanbaatar and another 60 Mongolians living in Hovd participated and improved their English skills, winning English Olympiad awards along the way. Some Access alumni have also begun to win scholarships to study abroad. Meanwhile, more than 80 children living in Mongolia’s far western Bayan-Ulgi province have participated in a series of Access summer English language camps, the first of which was launched in 2007.

The development of “American Corners,” first in Ulaanbaatar in 2004 and then in Hovd in 2008, has provided further opportunities for Mongolians to learn about the United States and for Mongolians and Americans to engage with each other on a person-to-person basis. Both centers are located in local public libraries, providing free access while serving as a useful center for information about any number of topics related to the United States.

Resources available at these two American Corners in Mongolia include Internet access as well as videos, books, and magazines. In addition, the American Corner in Ulaanbaatar provides weekly lectures in English on a wide range of topics. Typically, 40 or 50 Mongolians attend these lectures each week, providing opportunities for visiting Americans to meet with Mongolians, discuss any number of subjects and learn from each other.

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Established by the US Congress in 2001, the US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation helps to preserve cultural sites, objects, collections, and forms of traditional expression. It plays an especially useful role in funding initiatives aimed at protecting Mongolian culture and presenting it to a wider audience. Individual US ambassadors at posts around the world solicit prospective projects before sending documents to Washington for a broader review in competition with proposals from dozens of other countries. Over the years, Mongolia has fared exceptionally well in this annual competition, garnering additional support for programs that strengthen cultural relations between the two countries.

From the launch of the program in 2001 through 2012, Mongolia received more than $300,000 under 12 different “small grants” provided by the Ambassadors Fund. The first, awarded in 2002, focused on preserving Mongolia’s folk traditions and involved the Institute of Language and Literature at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Two years later, $30,000 was provided to support a team of scientists from Mongolia and the Smithsonian Institution to document 3,000-year-old carved stone plinths, known as Deer Stones, scattered around many unprotected sites throughout northern Mongolia.

In 2008, a further $39,000 was provided to help preserve and protect a series of Deer Stones in the remote Khanui Valley in the north central province of Arkhanghai. As former US Ambassador Mark Minton recalls, “Visiting these archeological digs in the field was one of the most memorable experiences I had during my three years in country.”

A pioneering project of the Noyon Khutagt Danzanravjaa Museum near Sainshand, south of Ulaanbaatar received $28,000 from the Ambassadors Fund. The intent was to help preserve recently recovered manuscripts, books, religious items, personal possessions, and tsam dance costumes that once belonged to Buddhist monks in the area. The items were buried hastily during the 1930s at a time when monasteries across Mongolia faced destruction.

Remarkably, the location of this treasure was secretly passed on to a new generation; it was only in the 1990s that the location was finally revealed and some of the hidden chests were dug up. Danzanravjaa, often referred to simply as the “Lama of the Gobi,” has himself become better known in recent years, both as a poet and as the orchestrator of lavish, colorful, and highly creative nineteenth-century dramas featuring tsam mask dances, a custom that is now being revived.

Several other Mongolian museums have also benefitted from these small grants, including the Zanabazar Museum ($18,000) and the Museum of Modern Art ($27,000) in Ulaanbaatar, both of which received support in 2010. The Zanabazar Museum grant was targeted on preserving and presenting objects from a seventeenth-century Tureg-era burial mound, while the grant to the Museum of Modern Art funded secure display cases that help protect paintings, sculptures, and other objects produced by Mongolian artists since the early part of the twentieth century.

In addition, $30,000 was allocated to an archaeological initiative directed by the president of Chinggis Khan University, founder of the Center for Mongolian Historical and Cultural Heritage. Launched in 2007, this initiative aimed at assessing and protecting historic monuments and archaeological sites surrounding Ulaanbaatar, including a Neolithic settlement and several Mongol graves dating from the twelfth century to the fourteenth century.

Starting in 2006, the Ambassadors Fund also supported the Mongolian Monasteries Documentation Project. Relying heavily on GPS technology, the intent was to map, photograph, and document Mongolian monasteries destroyed during the 1930s. The effort also involved collecting oral histories dating to that period.

Finally, the US embassy is playing a notable part in helping to preserve and protect the early eighteenth-century Amarbayasgalant Monastery located in a remote but beautiful valley five hours north of Ulaanbaatar. At the urging of Ambassador Minton, an initial grant of $86,000 in 2009 involved an architectural survey and a fire safety and security assessment. One year later, Mongolia became one of only four countries worldwide to receive its first ever “large grant,” totaling $586,000, under the Ambassadors Fund. (Other awardees that year included an Armenian church in Turkey, a Moghul hunting lodge in Pakistan, and an archaeological site in Afghanistan.) The grant for Mongolia is being used to help restore the roof of the Amarbayasgalant Monastery’s main temple and protect it against damage from fire and theft.

As a rare survivor of the government-ordered destruction of Buddhist monasteries during the 1930s, Amarbayasgalant is a site of increasing interest, as both a pilgrimage site and a tourist destination. It is also closely associated with Zanabazar, the Mongolian Buddhist cultural figure who established the monastery, created some of Mongolia’s most famous sculptures, and designed the soyombo symbol that now appears in the Mongolian flag.

As with other Foreign Service officers serving in Mongolia, I have found that personal experience with those involved in cultural preservation provides important opportunities to deepen engagement with Mongolians from all walks of life. In particular, the Amarbayasgalant grant ensured that the US embassy was well represented at a ceremony to mark the opening of a large new stupa at the monastery in August 2010.

Remarkably, the guest of honor at that ceremony, held just outside Amarbayasgalant monastery, was an elderly lama who, as a young monk back in the 1930s, had witnessed the very moment when the monastery was closed, the older lamas were shot or imprisoned, and the younger monks were forced to join the military. In a moving way, the ceremony acknowledged the pain of Mongolia’s past while also affirming the continued renewal of a more ancient Buddhist tradition at one of the country’s most important religious sites.

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Other types of cultural exchanges enrich the US-Mongolian relationship. On a private basis, individual artists have traveled back and forth between the two countries, using their own funds or those provided by private foundations. Unique aspects of Mongolian culture—including both throat singing and the morin huur—typically find appreciative audiences across the United States. Over the last two decades, various genres of American popular music such as rock, hip-hop, and jazz have also influenced contemporary music development in Mongolia.

According to at least one account, the first officially funded cultural visit by an American performer to Mongolia occurred in 1989, followed a year later by the arrival of country and western singer Steve Young. Several years after that, in January 1995, the American jazz group Bela Fleck and the Flecktones visited Mongolia, playing to a sellout crowd at the Philharmonic Hall in Ulaanbaatar. The group reportedly blended a “dizzying assortment of influences, among them jazz, funk, blue grass, R&B, reggae, folk, and world music, into an ‘accessible yet exhilarating fresh style.’” As is typically the case in such programs, efforts were made to include Mongolian music in the mix and the popular Mongolian pop singer Sarantuya also made an appearance.

Since that early concert, the embassy’s Public Affairs section has sponsored a steady stream of other cultural visitors, including musicians representing a wide variety of genres, including jazz, classical, and hip-hop. The hip-hop group Opus Aboken performed in Darkhan; Erdenet was the venue for a concert by the classical trio Chicago and Friends; and Baganuur and Sukhbaatar welcomed the Ari Roland Jazz Quartet. Modern dance became part of the mix in early 2000 when the embassy funded two professional modern dance teachers. In more recent years, dance companies from Chicago, New York, and Washington have performed in Mongolia.

Cultural traditions from the American West bear a special resemblance to Mongolia and have been part of the cultural interchange over the years. For example, in 2005 Ambassador Pamela Slutz made arrangements for a visit to Mongolia by members of the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada. That same year, a delegation of Native Americans representing the Zuni, Navajo, and Apache tribes visited Mongolia, highlighting and affirming the many spiritual, cultural, and linguistic affinities that exist between Mongolia and certain Native American communities.

Perhaps the most significant and certainly the largest cultural event involving Americans and Mongolians thus far occurred in June 2010, when the Los Angeles–based, Grammy Award–winning hip-hop band Ozomatli visited Ulaanbaatar as part of a larger East Asian tour. Again, the musical influences were remarkably varied, reflecting the diversity of the United States and including not only hip-hop but also Latino salsa, New Orleans R&B, Jamaican reggae, and Indian raga. Ozomatli also conducted music workshops and included a special performance for disabled children on their program. The massive concluding concert held in Sukhbaatar Square was undoubtedly the highlight, filling central Ulaanbaatar and attracting an audience estimated to number as many as 25,000. The concert also featured the work of Mongolian musicians, highlighting again the unusual yet highly entertaining synthesis that often emerges when artistic figures from Mongolia and the United States meet, improvise, and learn from each other.

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State Department cultural and educational initiatives make a further impact in areas such as journalism and publishing. One 2001 Visitor Program, for example, brought 12 Mongolian editors, press officers, and journalists to the United States. And a number of American journalists, including representatives from Voice of America (VOA), National Public Radio (NPR), Cable News Network (CNN), and Hearst Newspaper Syndicate have taught training courses in Mongolia over the years.

Public Affairs programming also helps support NGOs involved in the media, including Globe International, which plays a pioneering role in promoting freedom of information. With help from the embassy, Globe International organized a study tour to the United States and funded projects on topics such as “The Right to Know: Freedom of Information,” “State Secrecy and Freedom of Information,” and “Protecting the Journalists’ Confidential Sources and Repealing the Criminal Defamatory Legislation,” initiatives that have enriched the discussion within Mongolia on issues vital to journalists and the free flow of information. As a result of these and other programs, freedom of information is increasingly recognized as a public right and measures to promote it are now being discussed in parliament.

Another US-funded program supports the translation of English-language material into Mongolian. Most notably, in 2001 the embassy released the translation of Basic Media Writing by Melvin Mencher, a volume that now serves as the primary textbook for journalism students across Mongolia. Several prominent Mongolian journalists helped in the translation, including Ts. Enkhbat, director of TV 9, and B. Durevdash, director of Mongolian Public Radio.

More recently and largely at the initiative of Ambassador Mark Minton, the first Anthology of American Poetry translated into Mongolian was released in 2010, featuring works by contemporary American poets such as David Lehman, who has visited Mongolia, and classic American poets such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen Crane, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, and Allen Ginsberg. A second Anthology of American Poetry followed in late 2011. The well-known Mongolian poet Mend-Ooyo played a vital role in obtaining needed copyrights and bringing both sets of translations into print.

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The most durable and sustained cultural impact often comes in the form of partnerships forged with specific institutions that take a long-term perspective and can be sustained over long periods of time. As an independent entity, the Arts Council of Mongolia has already made important contributions in cultivating and promoting the arts in Mongolia. The initial idea to establish the Council was an outgrowth of an early exchange program involving a two-week intensive study tour of the United States in 2000, organized by the embassy’s Public Affairs section, in which five Mongolian art managers participated.

Two years later, with additional support from the Open Society Forum, a pioneering group of Mongolian arts, civic, and business leaders formed the Arts Council of Mongolia, or ACM as it is usually known. A subsequent partnership developed with the Seattle Arts Council in the state of Washington, which provides further technical and financial support while also strengthening cultural relations between Mongolia and the United States.

Indeed, the ACM has been the implementing agency for several grants under the Ambassador’s Cultural Preservation Fund, including the most recent large grant to the Amarbayasgalant Monastery. Over the years, ACM has expanded its support base to include other embassies as well as private companies. Nonetheless, the US embassy remains vitally involved.

The American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS) is another institution that has made important contributions toward strengthening relations between the United States and Mongolia over many years. In this case, the emphasis is on facilitating opportunities for American scholars to study in Mongolia. The role of ACMS has increased as more scholars have become interested in Mongolia as a focal point of their research. While ACMS numbers two dozen major American academic institutions among its members, its base of support has in recent years expanded to include universities and research centers in both Russia and Canada.

ACMS opened its Ulaanbaatar office and library in spring 2004. Originally based at Western Washington University, the ACMS office in the United States is now hosted by the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The Ulaanbaatar ACMS office maintains a library featuring more than 3,000 books on Mongolia, currently housed at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology in its “e-learning” building. Interestingly, Charles Krusekopf—the first executive director of ACMS—served as an intern at the US embassy in Ulaanbaatar in 1992.

The growing network of other ACMS supporters includes private American citizens and major institutional donors such as the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation). In addition, US government grants to ACMS over the years have included grants from the Department of State, the Department of Education, and the US embassy in Ulaanbaatar.

Increasingly, the ACMS library in Ulaanbaatar is used by local Mongolians as well as visiting students and academics from the United States and elsewhere, including Fulbright scholars. ACMS itself has raised more than $400,000 for American and Mongolian students to pursue their research in Mongolian studies in Mongolia.

Over the years, ACMS has organized dozens of public lectures and a variety of workshops and conferences. Most notably, as a full member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (and its only member in Northeast and Central Asia), ACMS hosted an international gathering of representatives from 23 other member research institutions in August 2011, thus providing leading academics from across the United States and around the world their first opportunity to visit Mongolia.

Here again, private efforts often have an even broader impact. During 2012, the Genghis Khan exhibit—organized by “Dino Don” Lessem and using artifacts loaned from public and private collections in Russia, Mongolia, the United States, and elsewhere—was displayed to appreciative audiences at the Field Museum in Chicago, after touring in Texas, Colorado, California, and North Carolina and providing many hundreds of thousands of Americans a firsthand look at the enduring legacy of the Mongol empire. As the exhibit’s efforts to draw links between the past and the present enhanced its interest, at least some of those who paid to see the exhibit are likely to be intrigued enough to eventually visit Mongolia for themselves.

In another context, sister-to-sister partnerships are yet one more mechanism that has proved helpful in people-to-people ties between citizens of the United States and Mongolia over the years. The Denver-Ulaanbaatar sister city relationship is especially notable. Its tenth anniversary celebrations during the summer of 2011 brought both private citizens and government officials from Denver to Ulaanbaatar, including Jim Wagenlander, the honorary Mongolian consul in Colorado. In recognition of the Denver-Ulaanbaatar sister city partnership, the street along the Selbe River on which the US embassy is located, was officially renamed “Denver Street.” As one outgrowth of the partnership between Mongolia and the state of Colorado, the Denver Zoo developed its own relationship, in this case with the Ikh Nart nature reserve south of Choir, home to relatively large numbers of ibex and argali sheep.

Other sister city relationships have been developed over the years, including one linking Erdenet with Fairbanks, Alaska, and another linking Tsetserleg with Bellingham, Washington. Still other prospective sister city relationships are currently under discussion and likely to move forward in the years ahead.

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Perhaps no US-sponsored program in Mongolia reflects the strength and enduring power of people-to-people relationships better than the Peace Corps. The basic framework was set in Ulaanbaatar on August 2, 1990, when Secretary of State James Baker and Minister of Foreign Affairs Gombosuren signed the foundational agreement leading to the establishment of a Peace Corps program in Mongolia. Since that time, well over 800 Americans have undertaken Peace Corps assignments in Mongolia, many of them serving in some of the most remote corners of the country.

In Mongolia, as in any country, the goal of the Peace Corps is threefold: to provide training in high priority areas such as health, education, and business development; to promote a better understanding of the United States in the countries to which Peace Corps Volunteers are assigned; and to help the Americans assigned as volunteers to better understand the countries in which they serve.

Officially, the Peace Corps opened its doors in Mongolia in January 1991, when Chuck Howell arrived in Ulaanbaatar with his young family to serve as the first country director. Approximately six months later—on July 3, 1991—the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers, numbering 21, arrived in Mongolia to take up their assignments after a long flight from the United States to Beijing followed by a 36-hour train ride to Ulaanbaatar. All 21 were assigned to sites in Ulaanbaatar. According to Ambassador Lake, “The initial Peace Corps group was tremendously successful.”

Early areas of emphasis included English language instruction, computer skills training, and business development. In 1992, a new group of 25 Peace Corps Volunteers arrived, some taking on assignments outside the capital, including in Darkhan, Orkhon, Selenge, Ovorhangai, Dundgovi, Omnogobi, Sukhbaatar, and Henti.

The 1992 volunteers had been deliberately placed within one overnight’s drive from Ulaanbaatar. Gasoline at the time was not always available, so the Peace Corps put a 50-gallon drum of gasoline at each location to ensure that, if necessary, volunteers could be brought to Ulaanbaatar quickly. During subsequent years, the Peace Corps reach expanded still further into the countryside, and volunteers were soon living and working in aimags and soums across the length and breadth of Mongolia.

In relation to the size of Mongolia’s population, the Peace Corps program by 2010 ranked proportionately as one of the largest in the world. In August 2011, a further 66 Peace Corps Volunteers were sworn in following the completion of their training program in Darkhan, north of Ulaanbaatar. This brought the total number of in-country volunteers to 135—the largest number ever.

Visits by senior Peace Corps officials over the years reflect the importance of the Peace Corps program in Mongolia. For example, in June 1996, Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan traveled to Mongolia, meeting with Prime Minister Elbegdorj. Similarly, in April 2007 Peace Corps Director Ron Tschetter visited President Enkhbayar. Both senior visitors also met with Peace Corps Volunteers and were introduced to Mongolian counterparts from around the country.

English language teaching was a major focus from the very beginning and remains the single largest Peace Corps program in Mongolia to this day. The intent is to improve the skills of qualified Mongolian English language teachers, develop English resources materials, and work directly with students to improve their English language skills. By 2011, some 580 Peace Corps Volunteers had taught English in Mongolia at one time or another, most having been assigned to secondary schools, provincial education departments, or institutes of higher education in settlements across the country.

Over the years, the program has developed other areas of interest and activity, including computer training, health education, community economic development, youth development, and the environment. Establishing and sustaining strong relationships with local counterparts has always been a central part of the Peace Corps program in Mongolia. Typically, host institutions not only offer a useful work setting but also provide housing. While some Peace Corps Volunteers live in apartments, many experience traditional Mongolian culture firsthand by living in gers throughout their two-year Peace Corps assignment.

On occasion, Peace Corps Volunteers have assumed assignments that help further strengthen the impact of other US-funded programs. For example, individual Peace Corps Volunteers recently helped counterparts develop proposals for Millennium Challenge Agency “small grant” programs in the health sector. Similarly, Peace Corps Volunteers have worked with the USAID-funded Ger and Gobi initiatives and with Mongolian entities that had previously received USAID support, such as Development Solutions and Khaan Bank.

“Secondary projects” constitute another important feature of the Peace Corps program in Mongolia. While making significant contributions throughout their “primary” assignments, volunteers each select and develop a specific community outreach project at some point during their two years of service in Mongolia. These projects help expand the impact of the Peace Corps presence still further.

Over the last two decades, secondary projects undertaken by Peace Corps Volunteers have been the catalyst for countless workshops, seminars, and new Websites; helped establish new libraries, information centers, and computer labs; and contributed to the publication of new curricula, guidebooks, brochures, training manuals, and even Mongolia’s first sign language dictionary. During their time in Mongolia, individual Peace Corps Volunteers have formed clubs, composed music, organized rock bands, built greenhouses, produced public awareness videos, launched television shows, helped disabled people, equipped libraries, donated bikes, and provided helmets for young Mongolian jockeys racing in local Naadam festivals.

While Peace Corps Volunteers typically work in Mongolia for two years, the experience of life on the steppe remains with them for a lifetime. When they return to the United States, they bring with them a wealth of knowledge and personal experience about Mongolia—and are well positioned to pass that knowledge and experience on to friends, families, and communities back home. During training, each Peace Corps Volunteer is assigned a “host family”; and, once assigned, each volunteer is paired with a Mongolian counterpart. Often, these key relationships mark the start of lifelong personal and family friendships involving Peace Corps Volunteers and the individual Mongolians with whom they live and work.

As the number of Mongolians living in the United States grows, contacts are often made in both directions. It is not unusual to find Americans—often returned Peace Corps Volunteers—joining with local Mongolians to participate in a local mini Naadam, Tsagaan Sar, or other celebration. Some also find romance during their Peace Corps assignment and end up marrying Mongolians or fellow Peace Corps Volunteers.

Beginning with the arrival of the first Peace Corps class in 1991, Peace Corps Volunteers have made an impact in a variety of professions, ranging from private business to education to government service. For example, several returned Peace Corps Volunteers from Mongolia now serve in USAID and the State Department as Foreign Service officers. Others are engaged in international work in various NGOs such as the Academy for Educational Development (AED) or the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Following their Peace Corps assignment more than a few volunteers find ways to stay directly involved in Mongolia. Some have returned to work at the embassy or in the Peace Corps offices in Ulaanbaatar. Others continue to teach English in Mongolia, some at high schools and universities in Ulaanbaatar. Still others have applied their skills with local and international NGOs such as Pact, Mercy Corps, and the Asia Foundation.

Over the years, some former Peace Corps Volunteers have returned to Mongolia to find employment in the country’s rapidly growing private sector, in at least one case in a senior executive position with a major international mining company. Whatever the setting, experience gained as the result of a Peace Corps assignment in Mongolia is often highly rewarding, both personally and professionally.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers were also the catalyst in creating Friends of Mongolia, a US-based NGO incorporated as a nonprofit organization in New York in 1999. Founded by the seventh group of volunteers (“M-7s”) to serve in Mongolia, the organization helps to sustain a continued interest in Mongolia long after those working there have departed. The Friends of Mongolia Facebook page now has more than 1,500 members, indicating that interest in Mongolia goes far beyond returned Peace Corps volunteers.

Friends of Mongolia aims in part to spread awareness about Mongolia in the United States. At the same time, it also supports projects in Mongolia, in part by funding innovative community initiatives and providing scholarships for Mongolians from rural families to study in Ulaanbaatar. During the 2010–11 school year, Friends of Mongolia funded 13 such scholarships and assisted with an additional 12 Matthew Girvin memorial scholarships. Matthew Girvin was an American aid worker employed by UNICEF as part of a UN dzud team who was killed in a helicopter crash in western Mongolia in January 2001. His parents established the scholarship fund after his death to honor both his memory and his commitment to Mongolia.

In a very tangible way, organizations such as Friends of Mongolia and initiatives such as the Mathew Girvin memorial scholarship fund further deepen and strengthen people-to-people ties. They also support the aim of many individual Americans to become a “most helpful factor in the development of a wonderful country.”

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