Where are you from?
My name is Ankhbayar Erdenebaatar. In my home country of Mongolia, I live in our capital city Ulaanbaatar with my two toddlers, whose names are Ariunbold and Az, and my husband Mr. Al- tan-Uya. Mongolia is known as the land of the eternal blue sky due to more than 250 sunny days a year. It is the 18th largest country in the world by land size.
What brought you to the US?
I came here to do a month of fellowship in Minnesota. My aim is to learn the best practices of integrating immigrants into society and to cultivate my newly found knowledge to returnees in Mongolia. I think my aspiration for making a positive change in our community is what brought me here. I came through a program which is organized by the State Department and the National Committee (National Committee on US-China Relations). I want to use this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to those organizations and their staff who are doing the fantastic job of giving us this opportunity.
What do you do in Mongolia?
I work as a return and re-integration specialist for the International Organization for Migration Mongolia, a UN Migration Agency. It is dedicated to promoting humane and orderly migration for the benefit of all. My main duty is to assist Mongolian returnees to reintegrate into our society and help to bring vulnerable migrants from countries through the implementation of the return and reintegration program.
What do you hope to achieve during your stay here?
I want to learn how resettlement and integration policy implementation works as a system at a non-governmental organization level from the world’s top immigrant country, the USA.
What organization are you working with here?
Daily Work is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide employment services and mentoring so all job seekers can thrive, resulting in a community where everyone can work grow, and contribute. I admire how efficiently this organization works and contributes enormously to society.
Before coming here, I researched the organization’s scope and activities a bit. Frankly speaking, I did not believe what I read. It said that 100 interns and volunteers, as well as one to two staff have supported over a thousand immigrant job seekers since 2015. Between 206-225 job seekers come and receive 1590-1671 sessions of consultation meetings annually, out of which 60-80% are immigrant job seekers and more than 50% get employed. The annual budget was between $180,000- $200,000, including operational and administrative costs. I doubted how it could be possible to work with over 200 job seekers, each of them having to meet seven to eight times on average and receive other types of support besides employment, all within this budget. How they attracted volunteers and in-terns and how they retained and engaged them was a big question for me.
I have been working here for four weeks, and now I realize that good guidance programs, excellent supervision and an opportunity to see immediate changes in people’s lives attract a lot of volunteers and interns. It helps them to develop their life skills and become more passionate about providing employment support services and mentoring that can lead to financial stability and full lives for the job seekers. Not only job seekers benefit from the services of Daily Work, but volunteers and interns also gain from this. I can see and feel that every participant of this non-profit organization receives value, and every donation is making an impact on the well-being of society.
What are your impressions of the US?
I am impressed by many things here. First, I am impressed by size of everything here. Big portion of food, stores, houses, etc. I am also amazed by the real diversity, justice and liberty of this country. I wish my country had this justice for everyone regardless of their position and wealth. Lastly, I am enthralled by the pure air and water, as well as forests teeming with wild animals in Minneapolis. The capital city of Mongolia where I live had this air approximately 10-15 years ago. Global warming, pollution and desertification were not problems only a decade ago. Now we are experiencing bad air quality during winter even though we have similar temperature as Minnesota. Because of that children and elders easily get sick and suffer from flu and asthma. Hospitals are fully occupied during winter with sick toddlers and infants. Coming here made me remember the teeming nature we once had in the city when I was a child. It made me strongly believe that we need to save our mother nature through immediate actions, by using less electricity, water and plastics, for the sake of our future generations. So please cherish and preserve this beautiful natural environment you have, I love it so much.
How is life different in Minnesota from Mongolia?
I saw many similarities and differences. As a working mom with two toddlers, I tried to learn about social support for young families with children here. Generally, I support women to work after birth without dependency on their husbands. In addition to this, we need to contribute to our society by our ideas and efforts. However, here in the USA, I think the maternity leave period is quite short compared to Mongolia and public day care/ pre-school for toddlers are expensive. In Mongolia, we have four months of paid maternity leave and three years of unpaid maternity leave entitlement. These public supports relieve a lot of stress and pressure from working mothers and families. Also, our public kindergarten starts at the age of two which helps parents to work full time. Living with pets is not common in Mongolia.
How are they similar?
The cold and snowy weather reminds me of Mongolia. Also, here in Minneapolis, everyone is eager to have their own cars for their convenience, just like Mongolians. I think Minneapolitans as warm-hearted as Mongolians. When I ask for directions, a lot of people help me.
What have you learned from this exchange?
This was an invaluable experience for me. Learning is only valid when you apply it, right? Therefore, I cannot say I am a “complete” learner right now, but I will prove myself by my actions. I started by saving energy, having less consumption than before, trying to be more punctual and seeing things from different vantage points.
I am fortunate for having a great host family. My host mom Ms. Jennifer and her daughter Ms. Eva treated me as their daughter and sister during my stay. I saw how Americans live and was impressed with their hospitality. Also, our everyday chit-chat enabled me to understand the culture. Before I came here, I hadn't lived with dogs and cats. This experience helped me to love animals more.
All in all, I thank my host family, organization and organizers of this program and I want to thank my parents and family who were always there for me.
