Mongolian Herder Livelihood Diversification Project

August 2004 - February 2007

World Vision (WV) was awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Food for Progress Wheat Monetization Program, to implement the Mongolian Herder Livelihood Diversification Project. The project aims to enhance the economic prosperity of herders through diversification of environmentally sustainable agricultural production practices; increase value-added agricultural processing opportunities; expand market access for agricultural products; strengthen herder capacity to capitalize on agricultural production, processing and marketing opportunities; and increase herder education literacy (reading), legal literacy, and agricultural skills.

Pact's role is to implement the education component of the project through providing multimedia distance education to about 10,000 marginalized herder children, aged 15 to 19, who have dropped out of school in Bayan-Olgii, Khentii and Dornod aimags. The program will impart vital reading, legal literacy, animal husbandry, and business skills.

Pact's approach

Over a 30-month period Pact will develop a multimedia distance literacy education program that will utilize a model in which entertainment formats are used for an educational purpose. The radio and TV productions will incorporate a series of dramatic character actors who will also be featured in print inserts in national publications and distributed through schools and post offices to create strong brand recognition and cross-media identification.

Specifically, Pact will:

• Develop the Herders Distance Education curriculum as well as an appropriate continuing curriculum for herder youth from 15-19 years of age.
• Develop/produce a radio drama in three series of 26 episodes each to be broadcast on local radio stations.
• Write/produce four-page print inserts carrying the radio themes in more detail to be distributed on a monthly basis. Ten thousand copies per month will be disseminated throughout the three aimags through Rural Business News magazine, WV Education Resource Centers, schools and post offices.
• Write/produce seven TV support videos of 30 minutes each, which will support both the radio drama series and the print inserts. Videos will be available for viewing at the WV Education Resource Centers.

Pact will collaborate closely in the production and dissemination of the above multimedia projects with WV personnel in Mongolia to ensure project integrity and synergy with WV's own program initiatives. Pact will also utilize its own monitoring and evaluation technique called Participatory Information Systems Assessment (PISA), a rapid assessment survey technique which is designed to collect qualitative and quantitative data regarding the acceptability and appropriateness of the multimedia productions.

Interim results

Print Inserts

• The following topics are a selection of those covered in the inserts: sustainable herd size, what the market is, where Mongolian herders fit in, and alcohol abuse in Mongolia. Each month a new print insert is produced and 10,000 copies are distributed in the 3 target aimags.

Radio and video program development

• The first 13 radio scripts have been produced.
• The video production team completed shooting of the first three (of seven) videos. The videos are titled "Quality Animals And Horn Like Plough," "Dried Curds Labeled and Filled With Vegetables" and "Winter Heaven."
• 25 radio series sets per aimag were produced and disseminated in Khentii, Dornod, and Bayan-Ulgii
• In the most recent survey done by Mongol Radio around radio audiences in the first quarter of 2005, three Pact programs remained in the top twenty listenership segments out of 88 programs.
• Focus group activities were conducted with young herders.
• Pact staff conducted a presentation on behavior change communication and education-entertainment and multi-media at the Training Workshop for WV project team held on 10-13 May, 2005, in Ulaanbaatar