It's Time For a Summertime Dream The Soaring Crane Summer Camp - Helping 6-16 year olds

​The Soaring Crane Summer Camp has been a dream since the beginning.  It has been the goal to be able to deliver a programme that is fun, interesting, important and life changing to the older children from the dump community and other disadvantaged children who don't currently see a way forward to a meaningful, productive life.  Imagine a camp where you get to visit a replica of a 13th Century Mongol Warrior camp and handle their weapons, wear their armour and hang out in exact replicas of their lodging?  Imagine then crossing the wild steppe to another part of the village to learn about the history of religion, philosophy and writing.  Imagine being able to visit the largest equestrian statue in the world and get to climb up onto the head of the horse! Imagine wearing fur and jewels and skins like your ancestors did and seeing what traditional handicrafts were like in the 13th century.  Then imagine you get to milk cows, make dairy products, ride horses , hike, draw, and play in the river.  And you get to think about and dream big for your future. You get to think about your past and the past of your people and with pride plan your own future.  This is Soaring Crane Summer Camp. It is designed to ground the campers in their wonderful history while encouraging them to seek their own personal greatness by taking control of their own future.  It is designed to provide the spark!

Summer 2016 will go down with Veloo Foundation as the summer when it all came together.  As the summer when, with the help of some great people and wonderful companies we were able to really integrate our programmes in order to  help all  the children: 3 -5 year olds at the kindergarten and 6 - 16 year olds at the Soaring Crane Summer Camp
This is how it works:
Staff from the kindergarten work at the camp in the summer, the 16 -19 year olds who study in our Tourism English Programme work there as tour guides for volunteers - folks coming to  trek with Horse Trek Mongolia who choose to stay and volunteer as an add on to their trek. The children's programme is overseen by our local NGO partner, the Communication Development 

Apologies - We were having too much fun sometimes to ensure we had great photos.  Thought I would share them anyway !

Centre's Baacandorj. The kids?  Well they come from some of the toughest, hard scrabble homes around . In addition, we have hired a young herder to manage our herd of 8 cows from which we get milk, cheese & yogurt for the camp and will also be getting meat for the kindergarten.  Next year the children will also be planting and caring for a whole veggie garden to enhance their life skills AND provide food for the camp and the kindergarten. All in all , it's just a simple thing.  Win. Win. Win.

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Thanks to Genco Tour Bureau, Oyu Tolgoi, Erdene Soum , Nomadic School of Business and with a number of Volunteer English Teachers & Soaring Crane Camp counsellors we're able to offer the amazing programme as outlined in the brochure below.

What goes on at the camp?  Check out our brochure below - be sure to scroll to the 2nd page!

Each year there will be an add-on week at the camp when we hire it out to a school or similar group.  The plan is that that will cover the few operating costs that we have.  Win. Win. Win.  Please contact us if your group is interested in booking the week for 2017.