Tsagaan Sar Food Drive Challenge - Bringing Love to the People...and Food!

, February 2nd, 2016

Dateline - Children of the Peak Sancutary, Songin Khaikhan District, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

What a wonderful and amazing day! It is not every day that you get to experience hands-on the joy of seeing people helping people but yesterday was just that - a day to celebrate the generosity of spirit in our community!  The combined efforts of schools, companies, donors (both local AND international!), sanctuary staff and volunteers meant that we were able to distribute Tsagaan Sar joy to over 80 families in the form of food hampers, wood & coal! This means there will be a celebration, warmth, food and family joy in over 80 households that would have had nothing.  Many of them would not have been able to celebrate this most important of all holidays in Mongolia without your help.  The joy and heartfelt thanks on their faces and in their eyes is hard to express but  I'm hoping that you will be able to see in glowing in  these photos. They were all extremely happy to receive these wonderful gifts and, once again, the Tsagaan Sar Food Drive, the brain child of the indomitable Susan Durrant, has reached the into the heart of one of the poorest communities in Mongolia and brought some joy!

Thank you to everyone who donated, organized, sorted, carried, delivered, and distributed donations.  Special thanks to Michelle Borok for getting the idea rolling, the word  out there and the donations rolling in!  Porsche Mongolia, I have it on good authority, looked like a grocery store for a while last week as a steady stream of generous local individuals dropped by with donations ranging from a few bottles of oil to 100 pound bags of flour and everything in between! Thanks to Porsche and their wonderful staff for being the drop off centre, organizing donation events, sorting and boxing all the goodies, AND bringing them up and handing them out.  As many of our recipients are elderly, this really meant putting your back into it !  The great folks at the American School did an amazing job of collecting food, wood and coal and bringing it along. Thirty of our hampers were made with the food collected by the students at ASU and, this year having been exceptionally cold,  we found many homes that had nothing to burn except scraps of wood or tires and this addition of warmth on these cold Mongolian nights will make a huge difference to these peoples lives.  Gatsuurt Company arrived in the midst of the food distribution with a mountain of potatoes ( which will be rebagged into smaller bags and handed out this week!) AND 1000 buzz as a surprise - hand made by their staff!  The buzz will be part of the Tsagaan Sar Children's Celebration at the kindergarten later this week.  To top off the day, Wagner Asia's CSR team showed up with a television, cable box and cable set up to donate in addition to a generous cash donation earlier in the week to the Tsagaan Sar food Drive.

The Children of the Peak Sanctuary Staff (as always) stepped up to the challenge and did an amazing job of managing the people at the gate, helping Grandmas and Grandpas on their way, carrying a ton of HEAVY boxes and bags, rounding up local children to help the elderly and just generally making sure that the people from our community were well served, enjoyed themselves and had a great day!

 Great team effort !  Next year will be even bigger and better!!  Thank you all for helping us make a difference, one child at a time.

Saikhan Shindleerei!